The Enigma of Colby Granger
by Cold Ember
Summary: Several bodies turn up across LA and when the body of a Naval Commander is found in DC with the same MO, the FBI teams up with NCIS and a web of government secrets and lies are revealed, as well as some secrets of Colby's past. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

_**Okay, so this is my NaNoWriMo fic (National Novel Writing Month). It's a NUMB3RS/NCIS crossover and, while the first chapter is basically all NCIS, the actual fic as a whole is much more NUMB3RS (and Colby) central and chapter 1 is the only chapter that really focuses on the NCIS team and that's because the case starts with them. So please, don't dismiss this as being NCIS central, because if it was I would have posted it in the NCIS fandom and I wouldn't have put Colby's name in the title. it's a Colby fic, really, but there's also a case and...well, actually, I don't want to ruin it, which is what I'm heading for right now, so I'm going to stop and let y'all get to the actual story. Please let me know what you think about this because this is, by far, the longest story I have ever attempted (over 50,000 words), so I'm a little bit out of my niche.**_

**_Big thanks to VanishingP2000 for the beta (and not killing me when I sent her all 26 chapters in one zip file and continuing to pelt her with other stories at the same time)_**

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"McGee!" Gibbs yelled and McGee jumped slightly before turning around to face his irate looking boss.

"Yes, Boss?" he said and Gibbs motioned him over, the annoyance clearly displayed on his face. McGee carefully navigated his way through the crime scene to where his boss was standing over a desk.

"What the hell does this stuff mean?" Gibbs asked irritably, shoving a small leather-bound notebook at McGee, who opened it to find it full of complex mathematical equations. This, as much as he hated to admit it, was way above his skill level.

"Sorry, Boss, but I really have absolutely no idea what these mean. These equations are…really, really advanced stuff. I mean, Commander Martins was a gifted mathematician, sure, but I just don't think that this is his work, it's just too advanced," McGee said and Gibbs sighed in annoyance. Now they not only had a dead Naval Commander who was working with the NSA on a Top Secret Project, they also had a notebook full of highly advanced math that they didn't know the author of. Just perfect.

"Wow, not even McGeek knows what this stuff is? This is a first," Tony said as he entered the study.

McGee ignored Tony and said thoughtfully to Gibbs "You know, Boss, the mathematics community at this level can't be all this big. In fact, there are probably only a couple hundred mathematicians that are at this skill level. Maybe less. It shouldn't be too hard too narrow it down to find who wrote it. You see, each mathematician has their own unique style of-" McGee began, but was cut off by Tony.

"McGee, let me see that for a second," Tony said and McGee just stared at him.

"Tony, if I don't even know what this is, how are you possibly going to figure out who wrote it?" McGee protested, but Tony simply rolled his eyes and plucked the book out of McGee's hands and flipped it over to the inside front cover.

"Here we go. Good old fashioned detective work trumps you and your MIT degree!" Tony exclaimed triumphantly, forestalling McGee's protests. "The notebook belongs to one Charles Eppes. Probably of the California Institute of Science, if the insignia on the front of the notebook is any indicator," Tony told Gibbs and McGee exuberantly, tapping the insignia on the front for effect. McGee just stared at him open mouthed and Gibbs smirked, more at the expression on McGee's face than anything else.

Gibbs walked over to the two agents and whacked McGee on the back of his head. When McGee turned to look at him in confusion, Gibbs shrugged and said "You should have noticed that, McGee. I thought I trained you to be observant. Good work, DiNozzo. I want you to head back to the office and see what you can find out about this Charles Eppes guy." Both Tony and McGee moved towards the door but Gibbs spoke again. "Not you, McGee. You're escorting the body back to NCIS once Ducky's done with it here."

Gibbs stormed into the bull pen in his normal manner a few hours later, cup of coffee in hand, as always. "What have you got on Eppes, DiNozzo?" he asked as he breezed by Tony's desk on his way to his own desk. Tony stood and moved over to stand in front of Gibbs desk.

"Dr. Charles Eppes. Professor of applied mathematics at California Institute of Science. He's definitely a genius, boss. He graduated from high school at age 13 and from Princeton at age 16. He's basically a math protégé. Here's where it gets good, Boss. He has an older brother, Special Agent Don Eppes with the Los Angeles FBI office. Fun fact, Don is 5 years older, but they graduated high school the same day. Anyway, Dr. Eppes consults on cases for Agent Eppes' team. Not only that, he also has top level NSA security clearance-he consults for them, too. Basically, he consults for every federal agency except for us," Tony said wryly and Gibbs tilted his head to the side slightly, silently telling Tony to go on, because he knew that there was more. "The FBI-more precisely, Agent Eppes' team-has been investigating six other people in connection to the project that Commander Martins was working on. They can only confirm that 3 of them worked on the project, but all of them had the same MO and the word "Mockingbird" was carved into their backs. All the others were in Los Angeles, this is the first one on the west coast, though. I asked Ducky and he said that Martins had "Mockingbird" carved into his back also. But the thing is, there are still a bunch of people in Los Angeles alone that worked on the project, not to mention all the ones between LA and DC. It just seems like a kind of big jump, really. But it suggests that they're not interested in killing everyone who worked on the project, just some people."

Gibbs nodded slightly in agreement. "Okay, I want you to get in contact with this Agent Eppes, tell him that we've got another body and that we're willing to do a joint investigation. And let him know that we're gonna need to talk to his brother about just what the hell these equation things mean. And what this NSA project was," Gibbs said and Tony nodded, moving over to his desk and picking up his phone to tell MTAC that he needed a teleconference with FBI Special Agent Don Eppes of the Los Angeles office.

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	2. Chapter 2

_**I figured that I'd post chapter 2 at the same time as chapter 1 because chapter 2 actually involves the NUMB3RS crew and this is a NUMB3RS fic, after all.**_

_**Thanks to VaninshingP2000 for the beta.

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"Okay, why hasn't this guy killed again yet? There are still dozens of people who worked on the Mockingbird project in Los Angeles alone-at least, that we know of, anyway- and this guy has been killing someone every week for the past six weeks, but now nothing for over two weeks? It makes no sense," Don said, pacing around the conference room like a caged lion.

"It really doesn't make any sense; serial killers rarely change their behavioral patterns, especially grudge killers, which is what this guy seems to be. Something must have changed," Megan said and Colby nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, we just have no idea what, which puts us even farther behind this guy than we already are," Colby groaned and David snorted slightly.

"I didn't think that was even possible. This guy has left absolutely no evidence, we have a suspect list of exactly zero and we can't even get the clearance to see what the hell Mockingbird is," David said wryly.

"Well, yeah, but before at least we knew that he was in LA. At this point he could be on the east coast for all the chance we have of finding him," Colby replied as he slumped down into his desk chair in exhaustion. It was almost 3am and he hadn't slept in…he didn't even know how long anymore. The night before last he had been on Charlie watch and he had spent the entirety of last night trying to call in favors to find out what the hell Mockingbird was-lucky him, he had the highest clearance of anyone on the team and a whole lot of people, high up people, owed him some major favors. So he had gotten the oh-so-enjoyable task of groveling for tiny scraps of information on a top secret NSA project. No joy so far, which meant that it was really, incredibly high level security clearance. Most of the people he talked to had never even heard of Mockingbird and the ones that did had only heard that it was something with math or something. It was definitely sounding like a Black Ops project. Hell, Charlie had been working on it and even with his National Security clearance he wasn't told what it was about.

Colby sat bolt upright in his chair, causing the rest of the team to stare at him. "That's it! This guy is killing off people who knew what the project was about, the leaders. I'd bet you anything!" Colby exclaimed in excitement and when the other three continued to stare at him he continued. "Think about who's been killed, a high ranking NSA agent, a high ranking CIA officer, a Colonel in Army Intelligence along with the three guys who've had no apparent affiliation with the NSA, CIA or any other letter agency, at least not since '01. They all probably had the clearance for Mockingbird."

"Okay, the NSA, CIA and Army guy I can see, sure, but I'm not seeing the former agents. How are you getting this? The only reason we've connected them to Mockingbird at all is because it was carved into their backs," Don said confused, but Colby just continued to grin.

"They're Black Ops, Don! Probably all the same team, I mean look at this, they all worked in the LA office up until they all quit in September of 2001…Right after 9/11. These guys aren't just Black Ops, they're counterintelligence Black Ops! This is big. These guys are like the Black Ops of Black Ops, they're ultra elite. Which makes the fact that someone managed to get the drop on not one, but three of them all that much more impressive and, well, frightening. I mean, these guys are good and honestly, if he got the drop on these guys, he's either Mossad or something or…he's a mole." Colby finished quietly. "Damn it, I should have seen this sooner," he groaned, rubbing his hands over his face.

"Hey, man, come on, it's not your fault, who could have seen this one coming," David told him, putting a comforting hand on Colby's shoulder.

"Well, considering the fact that I _was _a spy, I probably should have recognized this one. We should probably see who else left the LA CIA office in 2001; maybe we'll find something there. And then we should check the people that left the CIA in general around that time, but that is going to be a damn long list. But the problem is, there's really no one to report these people missing, they're expected to disappear for days, weeks, even months at a time. It's part of the job. Plus I doubt that the CIA will be overly open about their status, considering that, you know, they won't even admit that these guys actually work for them." Colby said, practically glaring at his computer and he turned to it and prepared for yet another sleepless night.

"No, Colby, you go home, get some sleep. We'll look into this; you haven't slept for days, though. We'll call you if anything comes up, okay," Don said, and David nodded in agreement.

"Yeah man, you haven't slept in like, what, almost three days. You look like you're about to drop. I'll give you a lift home. Don't want you to kill yourself and half of LA when you pass out on the highway." David smirked when Colby threw a half glare at him.

"Hey, I think that I actually work better when I'm practically comatose. I couldn't figure out that they were Black Ops when I was actually awake, but as soon as I went all zombie I had it in, like, under a minute," Colby said smirking and making absolutely no attempt to move.

"Yeah, well, if you stare at something long enough, it'll come to you. But seriously man, come on, I'll take you home so you don't _actually _become comatose," David said, nodding his head towards the elevators in an effort to get Colby to leave.

"You know, going home and falling into bed sounds really, really good right now, but I honestly cannot find the energy to move. Just…give me a second to get up," Colby said and for the first time the rest of the team noticed the sheer exhaustion in his voice. It seemed that his outburst of discovery had taken the last bit of energy out of him.

"Here man, let's go, I got you," David said as he moved over to Colby's desk and put his hand under Colby's elbow and helped him up. Colby swayed slightly as he stood and David gripped Colby's arm tightly to prevent him from falling flat on his face. "Hey, you okay man?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, just…you know…" Colby trailed off as he shook his head slightly in an effort to clear it. He pulled his coat off the back of his chair and briefly considered getting his briefcase, but decided against it. It wasn't like he needed his car keys, because his car was going to stay at the FBI and there was no way he was working from home tonight. Plus it wasn't like he wouldn't be back here by 0700 anyway. The decision was taken out of his hands by David when he grabbed his bag and through it over his shoulders along with his own briefcase.

"Colby, I don't want to see you back here before noon, got it? Get some sleep. That's an order," Don told Colby and he nodded gratefully, immediately regretting it as the world titled oddly. After a few seconds the world righted itself and Colby allowed David to support him towards the elevators. He had crashed amazingly fast. When he had figured out that the three guys had been counterterrorism Black Ops the adrenaline rush had given him a burst of energy, but now that he was coming down off the adrenaline, combined with the lack of sleep over the past few days, he was going down fast.

When David and Colby got into the elevator, Colby leaned heavily against the wall, David kept his hand on Colby's arm, but loosened his grip, he didn't want to run the risk of Colby passing out and whacking his head. The last thing either of them needed right now was Colby to get a concussion in the FBI elevator. The elevator reached the parking garage and Colby pulled himself off of the wall with a great effort and David continued to support him to the car.

David piled Colby in the car and pulled out of the parking garage. By the time he reached Colby's apartment building, Colby was fast asleep with his head resting against the window. David reached over and shook Colby's shoulder gently. "Hey man, wake up, we're here. And you can't sleep in my car all night; you'll really regret it in the morning."

Colby groaned and shifted in the seat before opening his eyes to gaze blearily at David, who opened his door and moved around to the passenger side door and opened it before helping the still lethargic Colby out of the car and towards the lobby of his apartment building. When they entered the lobby the guard looked at them with concern.

"Hey, is he alright? Haven't seen him in a while, and he's not looking so hot." The teenager at the desk asked.

"Yeah, he's okay, just, uh, hasn't slept in about 3 days and he crashed in a rather spectacular fashion," David said, smirking slightly as Colby made a protest that sounded more like a moan than any actual word as he leaned heavily on David.

They slowly made their way over to the elevators and when they got inside, Colby didn't even bother to move to lean against the wall, and instead he just continued to lean against David for support. When they reached the door to Colby's apartment, David looked over at him.

"You, uh, you got your keys, Colby? I mean, I could kick the door in or pick the lock, but I'd really prefer it if I could just use the key instead; you know," David said and Colby reached into his pocket and pulled out his key, placing it in the lock and opening the door on autopilot. David helped him inside and Colby just collapsed on the couch, dead to the world. He'd be a little sore the next morning, but David could only hope that he would wake up sometime in the night and find his way to his bedroom. Because it was clear that Colby wasn't moving again for at least several hours. David grabbed the quilt off the back of the couch and draped it over his partner before exiting the apartment and locking the door behind him.

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	3. Chapter 3

_**Okay. Chapter 3 is here, as always please let me know what you guys think, I always love to hear other people opinions of my work, otherwise I start to wonder if I'm writing complete crap. Plus, I worte this story much more quickly than I normally would, since I had a one month time limit to write 50,000 words. Also, this fic is much more AU than I usually do, so I'd really like to know if it works or not and if I kind of, you know, went out into left field.**_

_**Big thanks to VanishingP2000 for the beta as always.

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Colby was pulled back into wakefulness several hours later by the shrill ringing of his cell phone. He groaned and rolled over, glancing at the clock on his microwave. 6am. Fantastic. Less than three hours of sleep. Just great, really. He glanced at the caller ID. David. There was no way that David would be calling him right now unless it was damn important. He flipped the phone open and answered in his usual manner out of sheer habit. "Yeah, Granger." 

"Hey Colby. Sorry about the early wake up call, but we just got a call from NCIS in DC. They've got another Mockingbird body. A Naval Commander. He had one of Charlie's notebooks in his apartment, that's how they linked him. Anyway, we've got a jet taking us out there at 7:30, so you may want to pack. I have no idea how long we're going to be there. I'll swing by and pick you up at 7, okay?" David told him, sounding harried, then added in a lighter tone. "Hey, you can sleep on the plane; it's a nice plane, after all."

Colby let out a soft laugh, still not completely awake, but the sleep that he had gotten had given him just enough energy to keep him up and going for a couple of hours or so. But coffee would be helpful. "Sure man, whatever you say. I'll see you in an hour. Right now, I need to make some seriously strong coffee." David laughed at the last statement and hung up. Colby snapped his phone shut and groaned again before heaving himself off of his couch and heading straight for the coffee maker.

After he had set the coffee maker up, he got into the shower. He felt disgusting. He had not only not slept in three days, he also hadn't showered in three days, either. But he didn't have time to savor the hot shower, he was working with limited time and if he had stayed in that shower any longer, he probably would have fallen asleep in there. Lucky for him, he always kept a bag packed for just such an occasion, so he only had to pack a few things and he was ready to go by 6:45 and therefore able to enjoy several cups of nice hot coffee.

He glanced up at the clock again-6:57. David would be here soon, so he poured the rest of the coffee into a travel mug just as there was a knock on his door. He grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder before snagging his coffee from the counter and going to the door. When he opened the door David looked surprised to see him not only awake, but also ready to go.

"Wow. I'm impressed. I thought for sure you were going to just go back to sleep on the couch," David said.

"Hey, I was ready fifteen minutes ago," Colby told him smirking at David's shocked expression.

"How did you pull that one off?"

"I already had my bag mostly packed. Plus, Afghanistan made me prepared to haul ass at a moments notice on little sleep. The coffee helped a lot, too," Colby told him and David snorted.

"Come on, man, lets go. Don'll kill us if we're late," David said and they both headed down to David's car. Colby threw his bag in the backseat as he climbed into the car and they set off towards the airstrip.

When they got there, Don, Megan and Larry were already there and Charlie and Amita arrived only a couple of minutes later. They all loaded onto the plane and it took off a few minutes later. Don was sitting on one side of the table at the front of the fuselage, with Charlie and Amita on the other side, Larry and Megan were sitting at the table across from them, David and Colby were each on one of the couches along the sides of the plane behind the two tables. Colby was stretched out on his couch, once again fast asleep almost as soon as they took off. David was personally surprised that anyone could manage to sleep so soundly after drinking an entire pot of coffee only a half an hour before, especially given how strong he knew that Colby brewed his coffee normally, never mind what his definition of 'seriously strong' coffee was.

The rest of the team soon followed Colby's example and fell asleep. David was on the couch and Don was sprawled across two seats while Megan was dozing with her head on Larry's shoulder and Larry's head resting on top of her head and Amita had her head on Charlie's chest, while Charlie leaned up against the side of the plane, his arms wrapped around Amita.

They were all still in the same positions four hours later when the pilot announced that they would be touching down in DC in 15 minutes. When the intercom crackled to life, everyone except for Colby awoke and pulled themselves back up into sitting position, half of them pulled themselves off of each other. Colby, however, did not seem to even react to the noise and David pulled himself up out of his seat and moved over to him, but at the last minute reconsidered waking him. Colby could use the extra sleep, even if it was only a few minutes. So instead, David gently reached around and fastened the seatbelt awkwardly around Colby before moving back to his own seat.

Colby finally stirred when the plane touched down in DC, groaning slightly before attempting to sit up, only to be dragged back down by the seatbelt that was wrapped around him like a snake. He looked over at David in puzzlement. David couldn't help it, he burst out laughing, only to have Colby hurl the leather throw pillow he had been using at his head. The rest of the team laughed as they watched the pillow connect solidly with David's head and Colby continued to attempt to extricate himself from the seatbelt. When they pulled into the hanger Don looked out the window.

"Oh, look at this; it looks like we've got ourselves our own little personal welcoming committee," he said and the rest of the team looked out the window as well to see a group of seven people standing there. There was an elderly looking man wearing a bowtie speaking to a younger man who looked like he was barely out of college, a gothic woman and a man who looked like he was in his 30's wearing an Ohio State letterman jacket talking and laughing animatedly while a dark haired woman and a young man watched on, with what appeared to be vaguely disturbed expressions n their faces. Then there was a gray haired man with an intimidating demeanor standing slightly apart from the group, most likely the team leader, Agent Gibbs.

The team got up and grabbed their stuff before walking off the plane and onto the tarmac where they met up with Agent Gibbs team. When Don reached Gibbs he held his hand out to the agent, saying "Special Agent Don Eppes. And I'm assuming that you're Special Agent Gibbs?"

"Yep. This is my senior field agent, Tony DiNozzo." He indicated the young man in the Ohio State jacket who had been talking with the goth. "Our forensic scientist, Abby Sciuto," he indicated the goth girl next. "Our Medical examiner, Dr. Mallard and his assistant, Jimmy Palmer." The older man and the extremely young one this time. "And finally, Officer Ziva David and Agent Tim McGee." He gestured towards the dark haired woman and the man who had been watching Tony and Abby.

"Okay, over here we've got Megan Reeves, David Sinclair and the man who looks like he's about to fall asleep-again- is Colby Granger." Don said, gesturing to each of them in turn and Colby glared at him, causing Don to smirk slightly in reply and David to let out a laugh. "Then we've got our genius squad, the little curly haired maniac is my brother Charlie-" Charlie joined Colby in sending Don a death glare. "Amita Ramajuan, mathematician and Larry Fleinhardt, Physicist, all professors at CalSci."

The two teams all shook hands with each other, which probably took longer than it should have due to both Ducky and Larry having overly long, drawn out conversations with each person. Both teams, sans Larry and Ducky, who were now talking animatedly to each other, exchanged _Oh, god, another one_ looks with each other. After the introductions were completed they loaded into two SUV's and departed from the airstrip.

Larry and Ducky continued to swap stories and wisdom in the SUV, causing a certain level of amusement and weariness in the other occupants of the van. Palmer was used to Ducky's long winded stories and antidotes and Amita and Charlie were both used to Larry's quirks by now, but now that they had both found something of a kindred spirit in one another, the oddity was almost too much for the others to handle.

David was driving, with Abby sitting next to him. Abby liked David, he hadn't seemed judged her by her dog collars and tattoos. None of the LA FBI agents had, actually, but since they used a bunch of professors to help them solve their cases, they were probably more open minded when it came to appearances. David found Abby more than a little interesting, with her tattoos, black lipstick and spiky jewelry, she wasn't anything like a typical forensic scientist, but from what he had seen of Agent Gibbs, he didn't work with anyone but the very best, so she had to be good. Especially if she was allowed to get away with completely ignoring any and all dress codes. The two didn't manage to get much conversation in, however, as Larry and Ducky kept up a constantly running commentary.

Tony and Colby had discovered that they had both been members of the same fraternity, albeit at different times and different schools, but they still were bonding exuberantly by the time the SUVs pulled away. Well, Tony was being exuberant; Colby was just smiling and talking, still with the weariness etched clearly over his handsome features.

Ziva and Megan had similarly found common ground in the martial arts, causing the rest of the people in the car with them, with the possible exception of Colby, who was either too tired to register imminent the danger in the row behind him or he knew that neither one of them would actually do anything to him. Or maybe everything that he had seen made the idea of two women skilled in the martial arts not all that scary. Or it could have simply been that he could hide his fear with extreme proficiency.

McGee was currently the exact polar opposite of Colby, the way that Ziva and Megan were discussing the best techniques to quickly and effectively take down opponents was causing him to sink down into his seat, in the apparent hope that he could become one with the seat and therefore achieve safety. Gibbs, while amused at McGee's reaction to the two, was himself a little frightened of the two women in the row behind him, though he carefully kept his features schooled in an emotionless mask. It wasn't really a fear of any kind of physical injury so much as the fact that he now had, more or less, two Zivas running around. He could only hope that this one had more self control.

Gibbs shifted his attention to the man riding shotgun next to Tony. Colby Granger. The name sounded familiar somehow, but he couldn't place it. Before they had left the office he'd had DiNozzo take a quick look at Eppes' team and Granger was apparently the junior agent on the team. Ex-Army with one hell of a highly classified file. Gibbs' hadn't even been able to gain access to most of it. Agent Granger was somewhat of an enigma so far. Gibbs had the rest of the team pegged-Eppes was the leader, but he wasn't a hard ass, his agents liked him and were friends with him, he was the kind of boss that went out for drinks with his team after work. Reeves' was a profiler, and could definitely take care of herself. Sinclair was straight laced, but efficient and had definitely beaten the odds to get where he was. Professor Eppes had a child like exuberance, but he was a professional and reliable, not to mention brilliant, if not a little aloof. Ramajuan was also reliable and brilliant, but somehow seemed more mature and reserved than Eppes, seemingly the most normal of the three professors. Professor Fleinhardt was eccentric to say the least, he had thrown out a half dozen vague space related metaphors and analogies in the few minutes Gibbs had talked to him, he seemed like a younger version of Ducky, except somehow less firmly planted in reality.

But Gibbs just really didn't get Granger at all. He had a similar vibe as Tony, except much less silly and with much more depth and darkness. He'd overheard him talking to Ziva and it had seemed that they knew each other well enough for him to hug her and her to allow him to do so. This just added to Gibbs curiosity about the man. It could simply be that they had worked together when Granger had been in the Army, Mossad had, after all, been known to send operatives into Afghanistan, as the Taliban were a major national security concern for them as well. But Gibbs doubted that it was simply a passing professional relationship, if it were, it would be unlikely that they would even remember each other, let alone be hugging each other.

And then there was the comment that Agent Eppes had made when he had first introduced Granger about how he looked like he was about to fall asleep again, but Gibbs did not see any real sign of exhaustion on the young agent's face. Sure, he looked like he hadn't gotten quite as much sleep as was strictly recommended, but since when did any federal agent.

FBI Special Agent Colby Granger was definitely one hell of an enigma.

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	4. Chapter 4

**_ahem Sorry about the long wait, guys. It's been a crazy couple of weeks and, well, pretty much every single second that I've been on my computer has been dedicated to schoolwork. Ugh. But, vacation started today and so I update. As it turns out, this chapter is pretty long, so hopefully you'll all forgive me for the long wait! This chapter gave me a fair amount of trouble, too. I had stuff I wanted to get in, but getting the stuff in and keeping the characters from being OOC was a battle. And I'm not sure I won. Gibbs may seem a bit vilified, but I kind of had to so that I could explain some stuff and this seemed like the best way to do it(and lets not pretend that he hadn't been having a lot of ass-like moments the last couple of seasons, shall we? Especially towards Tony, so of course I'd take offense to that, cause you all know how much I love Tony!). Than again, I wrote this chapter at 0200-0400 and you would be amazed at the truly crappy ideas that seem absolutely brilliant at that time. But this still seemed okay the next morning, so here's hoping... But still, I am unsure about it. So on this chapter especially, I would love some constructive criticism (if you have a bone to pick with the chapter, please, share, I beg you. Be snarky. Go for it. Just don't flame is my only request, well, that and don't just tell me that you thought it sucked, at least tell me why you thought it sucked if you thought it sucked.) Well, as I find myself, once again, babbling excessively, I'm going to shut myself up now. _**

**_Big thanks to my beta VanishingP2000 (especially for cyber-smacking me and telling me that the first version was really kind of crappy, but in a really nice way) ___****Any remaining mistakes are mine, cause I went back and did the electronic equivalent of turning the paper into a red blob even after she sent it back to me the second(or was it third?) time(translation: I just edited the crap out of this chapter 15 minutes before I posted it).****_

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**_Chapter 4

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The two teams arrived at NCIS headquarters a short time later and they all made their way up to the bullpen.

"Okay, I don't have desk space for all of you, so I'm just giving you a conference room. I assume that you can all be in the same room without killing yourselves?" Gibbs said smirking slightly at the looks he received from the FBI agents and consultants before leading them to the aforementioned conference room.

"I also assume that a group of geniuses and _highly trained_-" The last two words were laced with sarcasm that showed Gibbs' disdain for the FBI in general. "Federal agents such as yourselves can manage to either find your way back to the bullpen or use your phone to call if you come up with anything," Gibbs said and the group nodded in agreement and Gibbs departed.

The team set to work, pouring over the evidence and files from the Martins murder and comparing them to the other Mockingbird victims. Colby was, once again, attempting to find out anything he could about Mockingbird from his various contacts and, once again, hitting a dead end. Gibbs had come in at one point to find him in the middle of this and once he had hung up, Gibbs had told both him and Don that it was a waste of time and that not even Director Sheppard had clearance to Mockingbird. Don had coolly informed him that he was aware of that and that their own director had also been denied access to the files.

"Well, then what is the purpose of putting a junior agent on trying to get info on it?! If both of our directors can't access it, what the hell makes you think that he can?!" Gibbs asked, irritation clear in his voice.

"Because a lot of people, particularly in the spy community, owe me some seriously major favors. Plus my security clearance is a hell of a lot higher than you think it is. And I don't have to be official about it- it's damn hard for a director to get information unofficially." Colby told him calmly.

"Look, not even Ziva, who is Mossad, can figure it out! And how high can your clearance possibly be?!" Gibbs said, exasperated.

"That's because Ziva is not American, they aren't going to spill this project to a foreign government, no matter how good of an ally that country may be. And I'm guessing that there was a giant part of my file that you couldn't access, wasn't their Agent Gibbs?" Colby said, somehow managing not to sound smug, which was impressive, considering what he was saying.

"Alright then, how high is your clearance?" Gibbs asked, his tone clearly demonstrating that he didn't believe for a second that Granger could have clearance anywhere near as high as his own, let alone actually higher.

"Let's just put it this way, Agent Gibbs, this Mockingbird is most likely Counterterrorism Black Ops, which, unfortunately for us is just barely above my clearance level. If it had just been Black Ops, there would have been no problem, but these Counterterrorism Black Ops are some seriously impressive organizations. The only people with access to them and their files are the people in them," Colby said and Gibbs just stared at him for a moment before turning on his heel and leaving the conference room. When the door closed behind him, the rest of the room burst out laughing.

"Wow, Colby. That was pretty spectacular!" David said, once he managed to get himself under control and stop laughing long enough to speak.

"Yeah, you know Colby; I don't think I'd have had the balls to go up against that guy like that! I'm impressed," Don agreed, also laughing.

"Granger, I think that you might have a death wish!" Megan added with a snicker.

"Hey, I was just tellin' it like it was. I've earned my incredibly high clearance thank you very much!" Colby said, the smirk on his face clearly saying that he, too had enjoyed it.

The door opened again and Tony, Abby and Ziva came into the room. As soon as the door had closed behind them, they imitated the actions of the others moments before and burst out laughing hysterically.

"Now you're hot _and _smart! Not to mention daring and mysterious! I like that in a man." Abby practically purred, getting her giggles under control, but causing half the LA team to burst out laughing again at the blush that started to creep up Colby's cheeks when she had said he was hot.

"Wow, Granger, that pink is a good color for you, don't you think so David?" Megan said through her renewed fit of giggles.

"Don't answer that if you ever want me to talk to you again, David!" Colby threatened his friend and David's smirk widened into a full fledged grin, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

"Well, I gotta say, I think Reeves is right, Colby. That is a really good color for you!" Don laughed, the glare Colby sent his way only serving to make him laugh harder.

"What is this, pick on Colby day?! Look, any other day I probably would have tried to be more polite about it, but honestly, today, I am too damn tired to care! I have spent the better part of the last 36 hours trying to call in favors to get some tiny scrap of info on what this frickin' Mockingbird thing is and I am **so **not in the mood to have someone tell me that, just because they tried once to get into the case file and failed that I am wasting my time and should just give up! Because, clearly, if Agent Gibbs can't do it, no one can!" Colby ranted, before finally falling back into his seat, weariness etched on his face. He had failed to notice that early on in his speech, the door had opened and Gibbs had entered the conference room again. The rest of the team exchanged a quick glance at the uncharacteristic display of frustration- Colby was usually quite good at keeping his emotions under control.

"Well, Agent Granger, if that's really the way you feel, you could have just told me to shove it. That's probably what I would have told me to do. Although I'm still wondering how you have that high of clearance and why your name sounds so familiar," Gibbs said to the younger agent who simply shot him a half glare, the lack of sleep clearly making him less than cheerful.

"Google it. I'm sure you'll get lots of good stuff," he snapped before picking up the phone and dialing the next number on his incredibly long list of people. Gibbs simply stared at him before turning and leaving again, clearly heading off to do as Colby had suggested and Google his name and leaving Tony, Abby and Ziva to stare at him. Most people were smart enough to not talk to Gibbs that way. Very few people would dare to speak to Gibbs that way.

"Wait, you actually know _and _you're willing to tell me?! Seriously! I knew I should have called you first! Well, yeah, but it was nothing, really. You would have done the same for me…well, okay, for the sake of argument lets just pretend that you would have. Yeah, okay, we'll be there in an hour…yeah, okay…but I'm bringing my translator. Yeah, he has NSA clearance. Thanks, you are the best!" Colby said into the phone, smiling triumphantly.

Just as Colby hung up the phone, Gibbs came storming back into the room. "You were a Chinese spy." He said in that low, menacing voice that struck fear in the hearts of criminals and pretty much anyone else, glaring at Colby, who, along with Abby and Ducky, who both knew that Gibbs wouldn't hurt them, was the only one who didn't shrink away slightly or, in David's case, moved towards his partner to ensure that Gibbs didn't lunge for him or something. Colby sent a brief nod of thanks to David, although he knew that he would not need the back up, it still felt good that David was willing to go to bat for him against Special Agent Gibbs. Gibbs was radiating anger. He knew that the FBI was incompetent, but even this was a new one for them. Well, actually, this wasn't really a new one, seeing as how both the CIA and FBI had apparently hired someone who wasn't even a US citizen. The rest of the alphabet soup was getting dumber by the day.

"Well, clearly you only looked at one article. And are a complete moron. Yes, the FBI knew that I was spying for the Chinese and yet they kept me on. In fact, they even gave me some stuff to pass along to the Chinese, just in the name of improved internation relations. Either that or their background checks didn't cover the articles in every major newspaper or a simple web search. Are you kidding me?!" Colby spat back at Gibbs, in no mood to have to deal with the man.

"So you want to explain why the article says that you're a Chinese spy?!" Gibbs growled, anger still emanating from him in waves.

"Sure, why not. That was my cover. I was a triple agent, working undercover to find a mole high up in the DOJ. Ever heard of a man named Lancer. Mason Lancer, to be more precise. He was the real spy." Colby told him, disturbingly calm and emotionless and Gibbs opened his mouth to say something, but David jumped in before Gibbs could speak.

"Before you even think about suggesting, Agent Gibbs, that Colby's a quadruple agent or something and that he was actually working with Lancer, let me assure that there is no way in hell. And not just because he's my partner and I trust him. Because after Colby 'escaped' custody, he ended up on a freighter ship, where Lancer tortured him quite literally to death to find out how much he knew about him and if he had told anyone. He was willing to, and actually did, technically, die to protect this country from a traitor, so don't you dare call him one!" David said heatedly, with an anger that they had never heard from him. Not even when he had thought that Colby was a spy had he spoken so fiercely. This, Megan noted mentally, just went to show that he had never completely believed that Colby was a traitor, no matter what he had said at the time.

David took a menacing step toward Gibbs, but Colby moved in front of him and put his hand on his shoulder to still him. "Hey, man, its okay. Seriously, it's fine. He didn't know. Although, I must say, I'm touched by how much you care," Colby said, giving his partner a small smile.

"Come on, you don't have to take that crap from him Colby, he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about!" David growled, still glaring at Gibbs over Colby's shoulder.

"Exactly, he doesn't know what he's talking about. The media loves it when there's a spy in a federal agency, it's not such a great story when said spy is actually a triple agent, it's too confusing for the general population to grasp, not to mention it kind of ruins their pervious big scoop story. My media clearance was basically a small, passing mention at the end of the articles about Lancer, not actually by name, just as, an unidentified undercover federal agent, and most people never even connected the two. So, its fine, David," Colby said reassuringly, trying to calm his partner down.

"Come on, man, just one good punch. After that, I promise I won't go after him again." David said, still fuming and Colby laughed.

"As much as I'd like to let you do that, I don't want you to hurt your hand," Colby joked lightly and David finally smiled and relaxed his stance.

"Glad to see you're looking out for me, man," David said, clapping Colby on the shoulder and Colby grinned in response.

"Always, bud," Colby said, before adding. "I don't want to get shot in the back, so I need you to be able to cover me and you can't do that if you break your hand punching him. Plus, the paperwork would be an absolute nightmare!" David laughed at his partners antics. Trust Colby to always have several jokes lined up and ready for every situation. "And thank you." Colby muttered quietly, so that only David could hear him.

The rest of the room had been watching the exchange with interest, which David and Colby suddenly noticed and they looked around, slightly embarrassed, before Colby let go of David's shoulder, confident that he no longer had to worry about David trying to kill Gibbs-at least for the moment. If Gibbs made any more comments like that, he couldn't guarantee that he would be able to stop David from committing one or more felonies.

Colby cleared his throat before addressing the room as a whole. "That was...actually, you know what, lets ignore who that was. It's like deep throat, you know, heard but not seen. They're doing me a huge favor by telling me about Mockingbird and I'm not gonna screw 'em over by being too loose lipped. Anyway, we're meeting at a warehouse near the docks in an hour to get the info. There won't be a file and we are _not _going to be writing it down, so we're all going so that we all know the info," Colby paused and looked over at the scientists, noticing for the first time that Dr. Mallard and his assistant, Jimmy had entered the room, along with Special Agent McGee before continuing. "Except for the genius squad, minus Charlie, because we're going to need a translator for this. And Charlie's got NSA clearance. But no one is to mention that Charlie worked on Mockingbird. I'm not taking any chances. Everyone else-who, by the way, owed me much more major favors, stonewalled me. This one was just a little too eager to give me information. I don't know, I just kind of have a bad feeling about this."

"Okay, people, lets do this!" Don said, taking command of the situation once again. "Colby, you're point on this one. It's your contact and after calling as many people as you have to get it, you deserve it. Plus, if anything goes wrong, I can blame you." David and Megan laughed at Colby's indignant look, before all filing out of the room to get ready to go. Gibbs' team, however did not move, instead looking to him for instructions.

"Well, you heard him! Let's get going!" Gibbs said sharply and his team quickly followed him out of the conference room, leaving Amita, Larry, Abby, Ducky and Palmer there.

"Well, that was interesting," Amita said, breaking the silence.

"That's one word for it," Abby snickered. "I've never seen anyone stand up to Gibbs the way that those two did. At least, no one that hasn't either known him for years or was his superior. Or, you know, an ex-wife. I mean, when Agent Granger did it, it was impressive enough. But then, Agent Sinclair was willing to beat the crap out of Gibbs for insulting Agent Granger….I mean, just…wow."

"Quite, my dear. I don't think that Jethro has ever encountered such a situation, either. But it does seem that those two work quite well together and are willing to go to the ends of the earth to protect one another. Much like Jethro and young Anthony, except these two do not feel the need to hide the brotherhood," Ducky said thoughtfully and Larry nodded in agreement.

"I concur, Dr. Mallard. They work most spectacularly together. Why, when Colby was arrested for treason, I thought for sure that we were going to lose David as well. It wasn't pretty at all," Larry said, shaking his head slightly.

"Yeah, and you didn't even see the half of it Larry. It was bad. Really bad. I am so glad that it turned out that Colby wasn't a traitor. Although I think that David knew all along that Colby could never betray his country, which is why he was so angry, even after the truth came out. I think that he felt like he let his best friend down," Amita said sadly. "But I think they've managed to get past it. David understands why Colby lied-I mean, look at what happened to Kirkland! And I think he's also gotten it through his thick skull that Colby doesn't blame him for believing his story. It's good to see them back in business, even if it was a kind of rough start. I think that Megan's Who Reunion tour analogy was actually pretty accurate."

"Yes, it was a very fine analogy if I do say so myself," Larry agreed, nodding.

"Wait, what?" Abby asked, confused by Amita and Larry's conversation and Amita explained quickly.

"See, once Colby and David got back to their old, crazy selves and were working together again in a non-awkward manor, they, uh, had some issues. Like who was in charge of what and the interview signals and everything, you know. And I mean, seriously, I thought that no one could bicker quite like Don and Charlie, but David and Colby proved me wrong. Big time. It was rather impressive and actually pretty funny. Don asked what was going on with them and Megan told him that it was kind of like when the Who got back together for a reunion tour and it took them a while to get their groove back. Then Don made a comment about how he wanted music or something."

"You know, I think we might have actually found another team as quirky as ours Duckman," Abby said thoughtfully and both Ducky and Jimmy nodded their agreement.

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	5. Chapter 5

_**Okay, so here's chapter 5 (and you didn't have to wait 2 ½ weeks for this one!) It's on the shortish side as far as chapters in this story go, but so is chapter 7, so I'll post that probably tomorrow (I say probably because Murphy's Law tend to apply itself to my life quite often) Again, I ask your forgiveness for the weird time lapses between chapters (You know, ranging from 1 day to almost 3 weeks) but life is kind of crazy, what with being a senior and everything, but this week is break, so I should be able to do some catching up. Let me assure you that you WILL NOT be left hanging about the ending. I promise. It just might take me a little while, but the fic has been finished since November. However, I too am a reader and I know how you all feel about the mad long waits and the inconsistancies in the length of time between chapters, so I will try to update more regularly than I did with the last couple chapters. But, as always, I am rambling and so I will now proceed to shut the hell up. But rest assured, I will ramble again next chapter! Oh, stop groaning, it's not **__**that**__** bad.**_

_**Again, huge thank you to my wonderful beta, VanishingP2000 for being generally awesome and putting up with my dumb misspellings(now infamous marinating of a bullet wound- well, infamous with me and my friends, anyway) and not killing me when I sent her this entire novel in a zip file.**_

_**

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Chapter 5

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Three Government Issue Dodge Chargers, two black and one blue, pulled out of the Navy Yard and headed for the warehouse on the outskirts of town. In the first of the black sedans were Colby and David, with Colby driving, leading the rest of the group to the meeting place. The next sedan, also black, held Megan, Charlie and Don, with Don driving, and the final, blue sedan had Gibbs, Tony, Ziva and McGee in it. The two black sedans were FBI issue and outfitted with lights and sirens, while the blue one was NCIS and lacked the lights and sirens, instead carrying only a federal tag as means of identification.

All of the agents had Kevlar on under their shirts, but none of them were wearing FBI or NCIS jackets, so that it wouldn't be too overwhelmingly obvious who they were. Not that it took a genius to figure it out anyway; they just didn't want to make it _too _easy. They pulled up to the warehouse and exited their cars before entering the warehouse cautiously. They all spread out, not wanting to present too easy of a target just in case there was something off. Colby made sure that Charlie stayed close to him, so that if something went wrong and someone had to take a bullet for the Whiz Kid it would be him, because he was the one that had led them here, after all.

The warehouse suddenly exploded in gunfire, confirming the agent's fear that it was, in fact, a trap and Colby dived at Charlie, knocking him to the ground. The gunfire was silenced by the FBI and NCIS agents in a matter of minutes, but surprisingly Colby hadn't gotten off a single shot. He was usually the one that let off the most shots-and hit the most, too, because of his Army training and experience in Afghanistan, where if you didn't shoot everything that wasn't part of your squad that moved and shot it damn fast, you'd probably be dead. Once the gunfire stopped, Colby rolled off of Charlie with a groan and got up slowly and painfully before helping him up. Don rushed over to them, concern for his younger brother evident on his face.

"Hey, Charlie, you okay? Hey, are you hit? Oh, god, Charlie, there's blood on you!" Don said as he got to Charlie.

"What, no, I'm fine. Colby pushed me-" Charlie stopped short and spun around to look at Colby, who was now leaning heavily up against a column, holding his right side with both hands. Hands that were covered in bright red blood. David moved over to Colby and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey man, how bad are you hit?" he asked, completely skipping the 'are you hit?' and 'where are you hit?' questions, because it was clear that Colby had been shot in the abdomen, just below where his vest ended- it didn't take a genius to figure that one out.

"Not too bad, it's just a graze, I think. I'll be fine," Colby assured him, breathing heavily despite his assurances that he was okay. David put his hand on Colby's arm for support as Megan called an ambulance.

"Here, man, sit down, I got you, come on," David said, helping Colby to slide down the support beam so that he was sitting on the floor, with his back against the pillar. David pried Colby's hands off of the wound so that he could see it before quickly replacing them with his own and applying pressure to the gunshot. Colby let out a small of hiss of pain and David muttered an apology.

"Its okay man, just do what you gotta do," Colby murmured, leaning his head back against the cement and closing his eyes.

"Hey, I need you to stay awake buddy, stay with me, okay," David said and Colby cracked his eyes open again to look at him.

"Sure," Colby said without any real conviction.

"Hey, man, I think you probably could have found a better way to get a couple of hours of sleep than getting yourself shot," David said and Colby smirked slightly.

"That wasn't exactly my goal; it's just kind of an added bonus. I was trying to keep the Whiz Kid's head from being ventilated. I figure that his brain is worth more than my abs," Colby quipped and Megan laughed slightly.

"I think that there's a decent percent of the female population that might disagree with that statement, Granger. Did you see the way that those women were looking at you at the pool last week? Seriously, it's like they have never seen a guy without his shirt on before," Megan needled him good naturedly.

"So did you enjoy the view, too, Megan?" Colby shot right back at Megan, causing her to roll her eyes and David and Tony to laugh. Ziva turned to Tony.

"He's got you there, Reeves," David told her matter-of-factly.

"You see DiNozzo, if you looked like that I would not have a problem with you taking your shirt off in the middle of the bullpen, in fact, I might even encourage it. Also, that undercover assignment would have been that much more enjoyable," Ziva said with her trademark sly with a trace of dirty smile, causing Tony to look affronted and causing the color to rise faintly in Colby's cheeks and him to look down in embarrassment.

David smirked and patted Colby's shoulder consolingly while Megan, McGee, Don and Charlie laughed. Gibbs just turned away slightly to hide his smirk from the rest of the group.

Once the group stopped laughing, they heard sirens nearby, which had been masked before by the agents' laughter. They heard the screech of tires right outside the warehouse and then a pair of paramedics burst through the door and made a bee-line for the group, first focusing on Charlie, who still had Colby's blood on him and assumed, as Don had, that Charlie was the one injured.

"No, I'm not the one that got shot, he is! It's his blood!" Charlie exclaimed in annoyance, pointing towards Colby, who was still leaning against the cement support, with David kneeling beside him applying pressure to the wound. The paramedics quickly moved over to Colby and all the other agents except for David backed away to give the paramedics room. The two paramedics knelt down on either side of Colby and the older one turned to David.

"What happened?"

"He got shot in the abdomen," David said and Colby let out an indignant groan like protest. "Fine, he got _grazed _by a bullet," David said rolling his eyes and overemphasizing the word 'grazed'.

"Okay, I've dealt with my fair share of feds and so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that he's not gonna want us to take him out of here on a stretcher," the paramedic asked David sardonically and David smirked slightly.

"Are you sure you've never met him before? Because you seem to have his mindset down to an art form," David said, amusement clear in his voice and Colby sent him an irate look.

"In this situation, it's probably helpful, considering that getting a stretcher in here would be an absolute nightmare. Okay, so if you could keep pressure there, Agent…?" The paramedic trailed off, looking at David questioningly.

"Sinclair. David Sinclair." David said, James Bond style.

"Right. Agent Sinclair, I need you to keep pressure on that wound with your one hand and help me support him with your other arm. I'll take his other side," the paramedic said and David nodded. The two men helped lift Colby off the ground and Colby leaned heavily on David, in an imitation of the previous night. The paramedic wasn't actually taking any of Colby's weight so he let go of Colby and let David support him while he opened the door for the two men and the second paramedic carried their supplies out after them. Colby and David made their way slowly to the stretcher that was sitting just outside the ambulance doors. David helped Colby up onto the stretcher while maintaining his firm grip on the bullet wound. Colby groaned and closed his eyes in obvious pain as David helped him lean back and looked at him with concern.

"How are you doing there, buddy?" he asked, the concern leaking into his voice and Colby opened his eyes to squint at his partner.

"I'm great. Having the time of my life here," Colby cracked in an attempt to lighten the mood and was rewarded for his efforts with a small smile from David. The younger paramedic pulled off Colby's shirt and quickly replaced David's hand with a pressure bandage.

Don, Megan, Charlie and Tony all followed them out and David now turned to look at them and addressed Don.

"I'm going to go to the hospital with Colby, Don. Make sure he doesn't make _too_ many of the nurses faint this time," David said and Colby groaned again.

"Seriously, could we maybe stop using me as the butt of every damn joke? Could we possibly find another target, please?!" Colby asked, exasperated.

"No." David, Megan and Don all said together and Colby dropped his head back onto the stretcher in defeat.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road," the younger paramedic said and he and the other paramedic loaded the stretcher-and Colby with it-into the ambulance and David jumped in behind him before the doors of the ambulance were closed and the ambulance pulled away, sirens blaring.

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	6. Chapter 6

_**And on to chapter 6 we go. Now, I am not a doctor- my medical knowledge is basically what I pick up watching Gray's Anatomy and what I learned in Health Class. So basically, it's not much. So just… go with it. This chapter is where the weirdness starts with all my OC's and such. If you see a plot line issue, just let me know because it is a long fic and I have a whole long backstory in my head about everything, but if I've forgotten something and therefore something else doesn't make sense, let me know. And yes, I kind of did a shout out to my college in this chapter(which extends into the next chapter), mostly because I didn't want to have to research another college and I just used my majors because they kind of fit really well and I know all about them.**_

_**Huge thanks to my amazing beta VanishingP2000. Any remaining mistakes are mine and probably due to my excessive editing right before I post the chapters.

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**__**Chapter 6

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**_They arrived at Georgetown University Hospital 15 minutes later and Colby was looking considerably paler, although he was still joking with David even as they unloaded the stretcher at the ER ambulance bay. David was ushered off into the ER waiting room while Colby was rushed off into a trauma bay.

David paced around the waiting room, resembling a caged panther. A nurse made a move to come and say something to him, but then saw the gun and badge decorating his belt and seemed to think better of it and veered off away from him. Apparently she had experience with Law Enforcement Officers waiting for news on injured partners and had learned that they were best left alone. About a half an hour later a doctor came out and made a beeline for David.

"Are you here with Agent Granger?" he asked and when David nodded, he continued. "Well, as you know he sustained a gunshot wound to the abdomen. It was really right in the middle of being a graze and being a through and through that just happened to be right next to his side. He was very lucky, though, another inch or two and it would have hit an artery and he would have bled out before we could get to him."

David reached out and gripped the counter for support. An inch was all that had stood between his best friend dying and his best friend simply laughing the injury off as a minor setback. Thank god that guy hadn't had better aim. Or, depending on where Charlie had been before Colby had tackled him, thank god he had such good aim. Thank god for that inch, at any rate.

"Anyway, the bullet didn't hit anything vital and it hardly damaged any muscle at all. Your partner is basically the picture of good luck. We stitched the wound up and gave him some painkillers, nothing major, just enough so that it didn't hurt to breathe anymore. Which, I might add, he wouldn't admit to. As far as stubborn cops who don't know their own limitations, he's one of the worst. Anyway, I'm guessing that he won't want to stay overnight, so as soon as we fill his prescription for some mild pain meds, he can go home. I'll take you up there now. Maybe you'll have more luck in getting him to move than we've been having."

"Sounds like Colby. Although, he has the highest damn pain threshold of anyone I've ever met, so he might not be in as much pain as you think and honestly, after the couple of months he's had, this probably seems like a paper cut," David said and the doctor looked over at him curiously.

"If I may ask, what happened to him?" he said and David considered him for a moment before answering.

"He was tortured. Using drugs. Tubocurarine and Quinuclidinyl Benzilate. It wasn't pretty and it almost killed him. Well, actually it was the potassium chloride that almost killed him, but still," David said, shaking his head slightly and the doctor stared at him.

"Wow. Yeah, now I'm thinking that he might not actually have been in as much pain as we assumed."

"Oh, I'm sure he's definitely in pain, he just manages to block it out extremely effectively," David said, wishing, not for the first time, that Colby didn't need to block out severe pain quite so often.

"Well, in any event, we gave him the pain killers, although he insisted that they not be too strong, he still wanted to be lucid," the doctor said and David rolled his eyes.

"Like he doesn't know that the only place that he is going right now is back to the hotel and into bed. He was already on the verge of collapse before the gunshot." The doctor sent David a confused look once again and once again David explained. "Up until about 4 this morning he hadn't slept in about 3 days and since then he's only gotten a couple hours of sleep at home and a few more on the plane from LA."

"Well, with this injury, he is definitely going to need to get, at the very least, one good, long night of sleep," the doctor said and David nodded in agreement as they reached the door to the room that Colby was currently occupying. "You can go right on in and a nurse will be by with his discharge papers and a wheelchair for him in a few moments."

"Thank you, doctor," David said as he opened the door and the doctor headed towards the nurse's station.

The door closed quietly behind David, and Colby cracked his eyes open and looked up to see his partner standing by the end of the bed and looking at him in concern.

"How are you doing, Colby?"

'Eh, I've had better days. But on the bright side, the nurse that bandaged me up was very hot," Colby said, in true Granger fashion and David rolled his eyes at his partners' antics, although he couldn't help but smile.

"Yeah, you'll be fine," David laughed. "So, you've got a choice. Either you can walk-okay; actually you can be wheeled out of here in a few minutes when the nurse comes in with your discharge papers and the wheelchair, but sans your shirt. Or, I can call Don and have him or somebody bring you a shirt over, but it'll be at least 45 minutes before it gets here. Your choice, man," David knew perfectly well that Colby would chose the first option, as he absolutely detested hospitals with every fiber of his being, and he would also most likely make a vaguely dirty comment. Plus, he would definitely try to weasel his way out of the hospital's wheelchair requirement. Which wasn't happening.

"Well, as a service to the women and gay men in this hospital, I think I'll take the no shirt option." Check and check. "And man, seriously, is the wheelchair really necessary? I think I can mange to walk to the car. I'm fine." And that made it three for three.

"Colby, you do realize that if that bullet had been another inch to the right, I'd be identifying your body in the morgue right now. Which is not a thought that I find particularly pleasant. Not to mention the fact that the blood loss on top of your already existing exhaustion, you'd end up going down halfway there. And man, you're heavy and if you pass out, I'm going to have to catch you, because you are my friend and it is, therefore, my obligation to keep you from face planting. So, you're using the wheelchair or else I'm not signing the papers saying that I'll baby sit you tonight and then they'll keep you here overnight. So, it's either 5 minutes in a wheelchair or 15 hours in this hospital. Up to you, bud," David said and Colby sighed, dropping his head back onto the bed. He knew that this was an argument that he was not going to win and quite frankly, at this moment, not walking actually sounded very appealing.

"Alright, whatever. Let's just get this show on the road already," Colby said, clearly very antsy to get out of the hospital as soon as possible.

"Just as soon as the nurse gets here we can get going. And before you even think about it, we are going straight back to the hotel, where we are staying until tomorrow morning," David said, forestalling any suggestion Colby would have undoubtedly made about stopping by the NCIS office to see where they were in the case before heading back to the hotel.

"Sure man. But can we just swing by McDonalds or something one the way. I'm starving," Colby said and David looked over him in concern.

"When was the last time you ate, Colby?"

"Uh…that's a really good question. I think it was the Chinese we ordered for dinner last night."

"Oh, well, that's great. Allow me to rephrase my previous comment. You've been shot, you're exhausted and you haven't eaten in 24 hours. Are you just trying to see how far you can push yourself before you collapse?" David chastised and Colby looked up at him defensively.

'Hey, it was not my intention to get shot and you're the one who dragged me out of bed at 0600 this morning, getting in the way of me correcting both the eating and sleeping problems," Colby said and David deflated, looking guilty, which Colby noticed and hurried to continue. "Not what I meant. It's not your fault; don't shoot the messenger and all that. Blame the crazy that's killing off all these guys."

"I should have made sure that you had eaten something, though. Or at least insisted that you go to the hotel to get some sleep before you started working on the case," David said, unwilling to let go of his culpability in the matter.

"David, it's not your job to keep track of me, I'm a big boy, I can take care of myself." David opened his mouth and Colby quickly amended. "Well, at least I should be able to. And I usually am, too. Plus you were focused on the case, same as I was," Colby reasoned, but David still refused to let it drop.

"Yeah, but I remembered to eat!"

"And so did I, until today and that's because my day went a little something like this: 3am, almost passed out in the FBI bullpen, 4am, was dragged home by you and collapsed on couch, 6am, was rudely awoken by the overly shrill ringing of my cell phone, 7am, left my apartment with you for the airport, 7:30am, got on FBI plane to Washington DC, 3pm-now we're on EST, not PST, by the way-arrived at DC, 3:30pm, arrived at NCIS headquarters where I had to deal with Special Agent Gibbs being an arrogant, self righteous bastard, 4pm, get meet with informant and leave for aforementioned meet and finally at 4:30 pm I got shot by...someone at an abandoned ware house, which leads to me sitting here at 5:37pm having this conversation with you. Not really much chance for food," Colby summarized wryly and David raised his eyebrows at his partners' uncharacteristic bitter sarcasm. "Sorry, I get really cranky when I don't get food."

"Yeah, clearly. I'm guessing that the pain and lack of sleep have nothing to do with it."

"Well, they're not exactly helpful," Colby said with a small smile.

"No kidding. We'll stop somewhere on the way back to the hotel, but not McDonalds. Something with some type of nutritional value. How's Subway sound?" David asked and Colby nodded. At that moment the door opened and a nurse appeared with two clipboards and wheelchair. She handed the first clipboard to Colby and the second to David. David signed the single piece of paper saying that he would take responsibility for Colby and make sure he didn't go skydiving or anything that night, while Colby had to sign about a dozen different forms for various things. Once he had finally finished they both handed the clipboards back to the nurse, who thanked them and left, Colby watching her intently.

"See, I told you she was hot," Colby said and David just rolled his eyes, though privately he had to agree with Colby's assessment. He didn't comment, instead he offered his hand to Colby to help him up off the bed. David supported Colby as he got off the bed and helped him sit slowly down in the wheelchair. "Let's blow this popsicle stand already, man!" Colby said, eager to finally be rid of the hospital and David laughed at his enthusiasm.

"Sure," David said, still laughing slightly as he pushed the wheelchair out of the room and towards the elevators. They stopped in front of the elevators and waited for one to arrive on their floor. A young woman, probably a college student, if the VCU sweatshirt, jeans, messenger bag and armful of textbooks were any indication, looked over at Colby oddly. Not in an 'oh my god he's hot' way that would have been expected, considering Colby' well defined muscle and his current lack of a shirt, but in a 'why does he look so familiar' sort of way.

"Hey, Sarah!" A voice called and the young woman, clearly Sarah, looked around at a young man that was jogging towards them.

"What's up Eric?" she said as he got to where she was standing and handed her a folder, taking the textbooks in exchange.

"I thought that you might want to see this. Jackson just brought it in. Apparently Martins was killed last night."

"Damn it. We're being hunted, Eric. And we need to find out who the hunter is." the girl named Sarah fumed, turning on her heel and taking off back in the direction that she had come from, the man named Eric quickly following behind her, still holding her textbooks.

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**_Okay, I know that they could have (and in reality would have) given Colby a scrub top or something or that David would have at least given him his jacket and that it's cold in DC December, but I just enjoy the thought of Colby shirtless. So what do you say we ignore logic, weather and hospital procedure and all just take a moment to enjoy the mental of image of Colby wandering around shirtless?_**


	7. Chapter 7

_**Okay, so now that you've all recovered from the image of Colby shirtless, I bring you more of Colby wandering around shirtless (and women staring at him, because lets be honest, what kind of a female **__**wouldn't**__** stare at him if he walked by shirtless? Let's be honest here, shall we?) Now, I'm just going to warn y'all here, the OC's are about to start parading in and you might notice that some of the names are once I've used in other fics of mine, but they are not the same characters. I have a little cup with names of my friends and a few I just generally like in it and I pull them out at random whenever I need a name, so there are repeats.**_

_**Huge, huge thank you to my incredibly awesome beta VanishingP2000 for being generally awesome. **__**

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Chapter 7

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**_Both David and Colby simply stared after the two for a full minute, both completely ignoring the elevator car that had come and then gone. Finally, Colby blinked and looked up at David, whose eyes were still fixed on the last point where Eric and Sarah had been.

"Did you hear the same thing that I just heard?" Colby asked and David just nodded his head absently, still staring down the hallway in astonishment. Colby rolled his eyes slightly before whacking one of David hands, causing him to finally come out of his revere and look down at Colby.

"Man, did you just _hear_ that?" David asked in shock, causing Colby to roll his eyes yet again.

"Apparently, since that's the _exact_ same thing that I just asked you!" Colby grumbled.

"Oh, sorry. I was a little distracted by…you know." David said, shrugging his shoulders apologetically.

"Yeah, well, we need to run down all the VCU students majoring in Criminal Justice and law and all those related fields, see if we can ID her. We can start with Criminal Justice, because that's the most likely and then we'll move to the other, related, majors," Colby said, now in full agent mode.

"Wait, Colby, there's no guarantee that she's in any of those fields. She could be math or anything, really. Computer Science, Micro Biology, Physical Education…or god knows what else is involved in this project. It could take a while; there are a lot of students at VCU. And she might not even be a current student. Hell, it could be someone elses sweatshirt. And we don't even have anything on this Eric guy," David said and Colby sighed in exasperation.

"How did you ever get into the FBI, man? Seriously, did you not even _look_ at either of those textbooks?"

"Um, I was just a little preoccupied by the conversation that they were having. You know, the one about the dead Naval Commander, the one that we just so happen to be investigating? The one that you got shot because of? Ringing any bells here, buddy?" David said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the history of humanity.

"Well, yeah, I heard the entire conversation. But seriously, David, it is called _multitasking_," Colby said, stressing the last word, as though he was talking to a petulant five year old and David sent him a slight glare.

"So, enlighten me with your brilliant observations, Very Special Agent Granger," David said sarcastically.

"Well, one of the books was _Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detection_ and the other was _Homeland Security and Terrorism_. She also had a Law Dictionary. Sounds like Criminal Justice to me, now how about you?" Colby said, rather smugly.

"You're very proud of yourself, aren't you?" David said crossly as a soft ding announced the arrival of yet another elevator to their floor.

"Yep. So, can we maybe get going, we've missed the last three elevators and people are starting to look at us kind of strangely," Colby pointed out and David nodded, pushing the wheelchair onto the elevator that had just arrived. David reached forward and pressed the small round button that would send the car down to the parking garage.

"Alright, here's what we're going to do. We're still going back to the hotel and stopping for food, but we're going to put a hold on the sleep for a little while. We can access the VCU Student database from my laptop and see if we can attach a last name to our mysterious Sarah. While we're in the car, you can call Don and tell him about Beck, see what they can come up with on him. Once we get an ID on Sarah, maybe they can find a possible ID for Eric, too. And the only reason that you're getting to look through the pictures in the student database is because we're the only ones that saw her and we both know that there is no way you're going to sleep while I'm in the same room working on that," David said firmly.

"Hey, I don't think I have enough energy to do _anything_ except look at those pictures, eat and make not so subtle digs at you." Colby said, smirking and David rolled his eyes. Typical Colby. They reached the parking garage and David stopped and moved around the wheelchair to help Colby up out of the chair before pushing the chair over to the side with his foot. Someone would find it eventually, right now they had some names to run down and food to get.

David pulled Colby's right arm around his shoulder and used his other arm to support Colby's back, ignoring Colby's half hearted protests. David knew that it was just Colby being Colby, never showing weakness.

"Thanks man," Colby said, quiet gratitude coloring his voice.

"Don't mention it. You'd do the same for me," David said, knowing the truth of the words. They reached the car and David deposited Colby into the passenger seat and both were silently thankful that it was a sedan and not an SUV, because getting Colby into an SUV at this moment would have been not only difficult but also more than a little painful for Colby.

By the time David had rounded the car and gotten into the driver's seat, Colby had managed to buckle himself in and was holding the seatbelt away from his body so that it wasn't pressing against the gunshot wound.

"Do me a favor, David, and try not to do any of your famous stops. You know the ones where you practically stand the car on its noise," Colby smirked and David rolled his eyes.

"You're exaggerating, man, yours are worse than mine," David shot back.

"That's just because somehow I'm the one who always ends up driving whenever there's a chase and you drive the rest of the time. Hard stops are much more appropriate when I'm driving," Colby argued.

"Hey, just because you drive like a Kamikaze…" David said and Colby smirked. It was definitely true that Colby was better at driving like a crazy person but not getting them killed than he was. Problem was, Colby enjoyed driving fast way too much for David's tastes.

David turned the car on and pulled out of the parking garage and they made the drive to the _Subway_ by the hotel in silence. When David parked the car in front of the Subway, he turned to Colby, who had unbuckled his seatbelt the moment that the car had stopped and was now leaned back into the seat with his eyes closed. "You want your usual, man?" David asked and Colby nodded slightly without opening his eyes. David gave his friends shoulder a quick squeeze before climbing out of the car and walking into the restaurant. When he got back to the car five minutes later Colby was snoring softly and David put the bag of food by Colby's legs, careful not to disturb him before closing his door quietly and driving across the parking lot to the hotel, albeit more slowly than he normally would. He didn't really want to risk getting into an accident and having Colby thrown through the windshield. He was having a bad enough day already without becoming the FBI's newest hood ornament.

He turned the car off and reached over, shaking Colby's shoulder gently. "Wha…" Colby said blearily, giving his head a small shake before looking over at David.

"We're at the hotel," David said and Colby blinked several times before sitting up slowly and looking around.

"So, how are you planning on getting the drinks upstairs, cause I gotta warn you, standing up is a bit of an issue at the moment, and honestly, I don't think that a drink is going to last very long if I'm holding it right now," Colby pointed out and David grinned at him.

"I've got this covered," David said as he moved over to Colby's side of the car and leaned over him to take the drinks out of the cup holders and put them on the roof of the car before leaning back down to grab the bag and help pull Colby out of the car. He put the bag around his wrist; the other arm was once again wrapped around Colby's torso and grabbed the drinks, one in each hand.

"Gotta say, I'm impressed," Colby said and David inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.

They entered the hotel lobby and the employees at the front desk all stared at Colby. The women were staring because he wasn't wearing a shirt and they were enjoying the view and the men because of the stark white bandage wrapped around him, contrasting with his California sun kissed skin and the gun sticking out of the back of his jeans and badge weighing down his belt and left in plain sight without a shirt to hide them. One of the men, most likely the manager judging by his air of authority, quickly moved over to them.

"Sir, would you like some help with those?" he asked, gesturing at the drinks and the _Subway_ bag.

"Uh, yeah, that would be great, actually, thanks," David said and the man took the drink and bag from David's right hand and looped it around his wrist and then took the second drink from David's left hand. The trio made their way to the elevators and David pressed the up button and the elevator doors opened immediately. As they entered the elevator David reached over and jabbed the level 8 button and then he moved himself and Colby to the back of the elevator, allowing the wall to take some of Colby's weight.

"So…you guys are cops?" the hotel guy asked and David looked over at him.

"FBI, actually," David said and the man nodded.

"Yeah, my brother is a Metro detective. If I can ask, what happened to him?"

"Got shot a couple of hours ago," David told him.

"Ouch. Well, I'm impressed that he's up and walking." The man, whose name tag identified him as Mark, said as they reached the floor with David and Colby's room and David heaved Colby up off the piece of wall that he was currently holding up and made his way out of the elevator and to their room, which was thankfully relatively close to the elevators. David opened the door and Mark held the door open for them and then set down the food on the small table by the door as David lowered Colby onto one of the beds.

"Hey, I hope he feels better. If you guys need anything, just call the front desk. And…thanks guys." Mark said as he left the door, closing the door gently behind him.

David pulled the table over towards Colby's bed and sat on the edge of the bed and lightly smacked Colby's leg. "Dinner time, man, then we get to go through lots of pictures. Here." David handed Colby his sub and pulled out his cell phone and dialed Don's number. He watched as Colby slowly unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite as he listened to Don's phone ringing. Don finally picked up, narrowly beating out his voice mail.

"Eppes." Don's voice sounded weary and vaguely irritated.

"Hey, Don," David began but Don cut him off immediately.

"David, how's Colby?" Don now sounded clearly anxious and it occurred to David that he probably should have thought to call him earlier.

"He's okay, we're at the hotel right now. But that's not why I called," David said before recounting the conversation that he and David had overheard by the elevators. "Colby and I are going to look at pictures of female Criminal Justice majors at VCU to see if we can get a last name on Sarah."

"Why Criminal Justice Majors? Better question: why VCU?" Don said, confused.

"She was wearing a VCU hoodie. And we know that she's a Criminal Justice-or something related, anyway-major because Colby read the names on the spines of the textbooks that she was carrying. _Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detection_, _Homeland Security and Terrorism _and a Law Dictionary. And then he mocked my observational and multitasking skills because I was too busy listening to the conversation to read the title of the books," David finished and Don snorted into the phone.

"Yeah, well, he might have a point. But seriously, we'll see if we can dig up a connection between Martin's and someone in the hospital. And when you guys figure out who this Sarah is, let me know, we can see if we can find this Eric guy," Don said and then paused slightly. "So how is Colby, really?"

"Uh…hang on…" David said quietly, moving towards the window, away from Colby and spoke in a low voice so that Colby couldn't hear him. "Not great, but he'll live. On top of the sleep deprivation and gunshot wound, he hasn't eaten in about 24 hours…well, at least he hadn't before he started in on dinner," David said, glancing over at Colby who had already devoured half of the sub and had started in on the second half.

"Alright, make sure that as soon as you guys are done with the university photos that he sleeps. Preferably a lot of sleep. I don't want to see you guys in here before noon tomorrow and let him know that if you do I will kick both your asses. And make sure he eats something tomorrow. Something substantial."

"Yeah, I was already planning on it. There is no way I'm letting him work himself this hard again. I don't know how I didn't notice that he was driving himself into the ground," David said, rubbing a hand over his face wearily.

"David, it's not your fault, Colby is usually damn good at looking after himself, we were all focused on the case. But yeah, just keep an eye on him, make sure he's okay, particularly given the fact that he's now injured and he won't be able to push himself as hard as he usually could. But I know you've already thought of that. Okay, look, get to the photos, so that he can get some sleep. Let me know what you get and then get some sleep yourself," Don said.

"You got it Don," David said before hanging up. Then he turned to Colby. "Let's do this." He grabbed his briefcase and pulled out his laptop and set it down on the table and turned it on before grabbing his own sandwich and taking a bite. Five minutes later they had signed into the VCU student database system and had started looking through the Criminal Justice Majors-starting with ones with the first name Sarah.

"Well, there are 11 undergraduate and 8 graduate students. Here's hoping we get lucky," Colby said and David nodded.

"I say we start with undergrad and then move onto the grad students," David said.

"Works for me." They looked through the undergrad students and didn't find the Sarah that they were looking for.

"Okay, 11 down, 8 to go," Colby said and David nodded. They struck gold on graduate student number 6. "Ah, here we go. Sarah Elizabeth Rodriguez. Okay, then. Parents' files are sealed, she's married to Jake Rodriguez…whose files are also sealed, along with hers…she's a second year grad student…double major in Criminal Justice with a concentration in Forensic Crime Scene Investigation and Homeland Security and Emergency preparedness. She also got her Bachelors in the same thing from VCU 2 years ago…went straight into a Masters after graduation."

"Why is everything sealed…no, wait, don't answer that. Go to sleep. I'll call Don and let him know that we ID'd her, maybe they can get something on her. Or her parents. Or her husband. Or, anything, really," David said, pulling his phone out.

"Eppes." This time Don picked up on the first ring and instead of sounding weary and mildly irritated as he had last time they had spoken, barely 20 minutes ago, he now sounded severely pissed off, wide awake and ready to kill someone.

"Hey, we got a last name to go with Sarah. Sarah Rodriguez. Colby was right. Mostly. Double major in Criminal Justice with a concentration in Forensic Crime Scene Investigation and Homeland Security and Emergency preparedness. Basically the NSA's dream major. She's a second year graduate student, got her bachelors in the same thing from the same school, and married to Jake Rodriguez. Her files, her husband's files and her parents' files are all sealed. Not even Colby with his mega high spy clearance could get into them, but we didn't exactly put tons of effort in. It was basically me trying to sign in and see them and then him trying, too," David summarized quickly, ignoring the disgruntled sound that Colby made when David mentioned his 'mega high spy clearance'.

"Okay, that's good. We might be able to get something somehow. And don't mock Colby with the spy stuff, David. I think its part of the reason he's so focused on this case. He thinks that it could easily have been him." Don said, and David couldn't help but agree with him as he turned slightly to look at Colby who had crawled under the covers, still in his jeans, and had his face buried deep in one of the hotel's fluffy white pillows.

"Yeah. Good point. Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow and I will make sure that he eats. Although, I don't think I'll have to put in too much effort. Just putting it in front of him will probably work just fine," David said and he heard Don snort before hanging up. David closed his phone and quickly plugged it into the wall to charge and was half way done changing into a t-shirt and sweats when it occurred to him that he should probably charge Colby's phone, too. He looked around and saw Colby's phone lying on the table by the laptop. He grabbed it before realizing that he had no idea where Colby's phone charger was. He considered Colby for a moment, the lack of snores indicated that he was either not yet asleep or if he was, it wasn't a very deep sleep. He glanced down at Colby's phone. The battery was almost dead, it probably hadn't been charged for days. He moved to the head of Colby's bed and gently shook his friends shoulder to wake him. To his surprise Colby immediately turned over and looked up at him.

"What's up, man?" Colby said, more alert than David had seen him in a couple of days.

"Um...first, how the hell do you look that awake now? Second, where's your phone charger, your battery is almost dead," David said and Colby smirked up at him slightly.

"Well, First, I'm paranoid and usually when I get woken up in the middle of the night it's never good. And my phone charger is in the front pocket of my briefcase," Colby said. "Is that it?"

"Yeah, you can go back to sleep now," David said and Colby promptly rolled back over into the blankets as David moved over to Colby's briefcase and pulled the phone charger out of the bag and plugging the phone into the socket.

David turned off the lights and quietly moved over to his bed and climbed gratefully under the covers. DC was too damn cold. But it wasn't as cold as New York-he had gotten way too used to the warm Los Angeles weather.

His thoughts turned back to Colby's surprising level of alertness. He had looked as though he were ready to storm the beaches of Normandy whereas 5 minutes earlier he had looked like one of the soldiers at the end of D-day. And it broke David's heart to know that his partner, his best friend felt that he needed to be that on guard all the time. He knew that part of it was due to his time in Afghanistan where if you weren't hyper aware of everything going on around you there was a good chance of getting your head blown off, but also that his undercover assignment had intensified his need to be on constant alert.

David had noticed that since Lancers arrest and the end of Colby's undercover work, Colby had become much more relaxed, wasn't looking over his shoulder as much, although he was still more paranoid than most FBI agents. And FBI agents were generally pretty damn paranoid bunch. But now that David thought back, the paranoia had returned since the start of this case, or more accurately, since they had discovered that it was about some top secret NSA thing and Colby had once again been on edge all the time. So in all likelihood Colby had been far too busy worrying whether the guy in the elevator with him was trying to kill him to take care of himself properly.

David reflected grimly on just how much the DOJ and their stupid top secret assignments crap had screwed with and still was screwing with the team. First Megan had come back all jaded and incredibly messed up after her stint with the DOJ, making her consider quitting the job that she loved, immediately followed by the entire Colby debacle. That had left the entire team reeling. Megan had clambered to use all of her pent up leave time and headed for the hills, literally-she had been spending a great deal of her time up at the monastery with Larry. Don had begun to question his abilities as a leader and David…David had lost his best friend and had begun to spin out of control. But now he had his best friend back again, although he was slightly the worse for wear. Liz was the only one who seemed relatively unaffected by Colby's perceived betrayal and David had even tended to resent her for having taken Colby's spot on the team so quickly and eagerly after his departure. He knew that this was both illogical and unfair, but it didn't change his feelings of bitterness towards her.

But then Liz and Don had broken up and Liz had applied for a transfer off of Team Eppes and Don had happily signed it. The Assistant Director in charge of the Los Angeles office had made a sanctimonious, if not true, comment about this being the exact reason why agents didn't date each other, particularly when one of them worked directly under the other. Don hadn't replied, to the relief of both David and Colby-who were there as…actually, they weren't sure what their official capacity was, but they were basically there as moral support, well, more accurately, David was there as moral support and Colby was there to restrain Don just in case the director had said…well, something like what he had, in fact, said and Don reacted badly. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. Don had been surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

That is, until they had gotten down to the parking garage and Don had decided to demonstrate a perfect left hook on his car window, but Colby had seen what he was about to do and had moved quickly between Don and the car, taking a slug to the chest, which Don had tried to stop too late and hit Colby at almost full force. Colby had fallen back against the SUV hard and Don had looked at him in horror before asking if he was okay and apologizing repeatedly. Colby assured him that he was fine and that it was better that he was a little winded for a few minutes than Don break his hand and his car window. He had then complimented Don's technique with that shit eating grin of his, causing both Don and David to laugh. That was one of the things that made Colby such a good friend and agent. He'd always put his friends and teammates wellbeing before his own.

That punch had to have hurt and David knew full well that he had had one hell of a bruise there for a couple of weeks and David had seen him wince more than a few times from either moving too fast-or breathing too hard. A few days after the incident they had been chasing a suspect and, as usual, Colby had pulled ahead of him and tackled the suspect. After he had cuffed the guy and handed him off to another agent, he had doubled over, clutching his chest. He had insisted that he was just winded from the run, but David wasn't stupid, they'd only chased the guy a few blocks and Colby had chased guys much farther without even breaking a sweat, but he had let Colby take one for the team and when Don jogged up to them a few minutes later and Colby was still wheezing slightly David had steered him away from Colby who was trying gallantly not to show any sign of pain while in Don's sight line and David could clearly see that it was costing him. But it would cost him more for Don to know just how hard he had hit him and for him to cause Don to feel any guiltier than he already did.

He would never understand how Colby could be so willing to throw himself in front of anything, from his friends' fists to enemy bullets to being willing to be tortured and even killed to protect his friends and country and yet put on a frat boy, brainless muscle façade. His last thought before he drifted off to sleep was that his partner was definitely an enigma.

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_**Please, please let me know what y'all think about this fic so far, cause it's a bit outside of what i usually write and I had to write it more quickly than I would normally because it was a NaNoWriMo fic and I'd really like some feedback on it.**_


	8. Chapter 8

_**Right. So here's where it gets weird. I kind of went off into left field here, so hopefully where this chapter goes will surprise you in a good way. Hop y'all like it! See that, I kept it short this time. Oh, wait, crap. Sorry about the time between updates, I had last week off so I had more time to update, but I'm back at school again and the whip is cracking once again, so I don't have as much time to update. Well, it's still pretty short-ish.**_

_**

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Chapter 8

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**_

Colby groaned and rolled over the next morning when he opened his eyes, just to have them assaulted by the morning light. After a moment he dared to open his eyes once again and he saw David sitting at the table, sipping on a cup of Starbucks coffee and staring at the computer screen. He looked over at Colby and he sat up in the bed, staring at the coffee like a big cat stalking its pray. David smirked and handed him a second cup of coffee and Colby inhaled the rich sent deeply before taking a long, grateful sip of the strong brew.

"So Don sent over everything that we've got on this Sarah Rodriguez girl, which really isn't a whole lot. She's a straight A student, had a 4.0 GPA since high school, model student except for the fact that she tends to miss her classes because she goes on business trips for the law firm that she works with."

"Well, sounds to me like we've got ourselves a regular Sydney Bristow on our hands." Colby said sarcastically and David shot him a confused look.

"Dude, did you never watch _Alias_? Jenifer Garner in incredibly revealing outfits, not to mention tons fights, explosions and shoot outs, it was a great show." Colby said and David rolled his eyes.

"Should have known that you'd watch something like that, man. But what does it have to do with this, anyway?"

"She was a grad student when the series started and she worked for a bank, which was a front for a super secret spy agency and she was a spy. She thought she was CIA but she actually wasn't, but that's a whole 'nother story line," Colby said and David stared at him.

"I…didn't even think of that. Does that crap even happen?" David asked, somewhat warily.

"Yeah, actually. All the time," Colby said as if it were the most obvious thing ever.

"Okay…so you think that she was covert ops then? So, she might not even have any actual obvious contact with Eric. Yeah, this is gonna be real easy." David said, leaning back in the chair in exasperation only to sit back up almost immediately as the computer chirped happily at them, signaling that they had something.

"What have we got?" Colby asked as he hopped off the bed and moved around the table to sit in the chair next to David.

"Marriage certificate for Sarah Jenkins and Jake Rodriguez. Okay, so now we've finally got a maiden name on our girl Sarah. And a family history to boot. Parents are Maria and Joshua Jenkins. She has a sister named-" David said, before being cut off by Colby.

"Amanda." He said softly and David looked around at him in surprise.

"And you know this….how, exactly?" David asked in confusion, but Colby, it seemed had become suddenly fascinated by his cup of coffee and didn't seem to hear him.

"I knew that she looked familiar. But man, I haven't seen her since she was in junior high. She's grown up, looks a lot like Amanda did at her age, actually," Colby said in wonderment and David stared at him.

"Wait, wait, man are you saying that you actually _know_ this girl?"

"Yeah, I just, I never figured that Sarah would get mixed up with all this shit, too. After what happened to Ams…but then, she never even knew," Colby said, still contemplating his coffee as though it were the most interesting thing that he had ever seen and David continued to stare at him in shock.

"_Ams_?! Colby just how well did you know this girl's sister?" David asked, unsure as to whether he actually wanted to know the answer or not.

"She was my wife," Colby said simply, finally looking up at David, who couldn't have looked more stunned if Colby had just told him that he was a quadruple agent and was, in fact, actually working for the Chinese.

"Wait…what? See, I could have just sworn that you just told me that this girl is your sister in law."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I said," Colby told him. "Ams and I got married when we were 19. Quick interesting and classified note about my college years here, I worked for the CIA. Black Ops, exactly what Sarah is in. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same unit, too. Anyway, they got me freshman year and Amanda and I went through training together and we ended up on the same team. We fell in love, the whole nine yards that's the stuff that corny romance novels are made of and we got married in the summer between our freshmen and sophomore years. A few months after we graduated she, uh, she was killed. I left the CIA right after that, joined the army and never looked back at the spy stuff," Colby said sadly.

"So, that was, what, 8 years ago now?" David asked, still reeling, but his curiosity was overriding everything else.

"About seven and a half, actually. We never found out exactly what day she died. The date of death that's listed on the death certificate and grave is our third wedding anniversary." Colby said, leaning back into his seat, looking somehow more exhausted now than he had at any point over the past few days or even after the Lancer catastrophe. He was once again staring at his coffee with a weariness in his eyes that David had never seen before.

"So…I guess that Sarah decided to follow in her big sisters footsteps, hunh?"

"Yeah…you'd think so, only as far as I know she never even knew what Amanda did. The only time that I ever met Sarah was when I went to a football game with Ams and her family. As far as any of them know, I was just a random boyfriend. They never even knew that she was married. I'm willing to bet that they don't know Sarah is married either. Anyway, she was buried as Amanda Jenkins, they didn't let me go to her funeral, the stone just says beloved daughter and sister. The CIA purged all the records of our marriage and told her family that she died in a car crash. They said that her body was so badly burned that they had to ID her using dental records. But it was just so that they wouldn't be able to see her body. Because we never got it back," Colby said as a single tear fell down his cheek.

"Wow…man, I should really be pissed at you for lying to me about spying…again, but I just…wow. I'm, ah, I'm guessing that there is no way in hell you should be telling me this and that it can't be easy for you to talk about." David said, putting a supporting hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Yeah, well, I was done with spying, done with all that shit, lying to everyone about everything. It sucks, man, I'm not gonna lie to you. There are a lot of agents that are damn good at it, but most of us burn out damn fast. The ones that stick around long enough to be great, they're a rare commodity. Even if Amanda hadn't died, I couldn't have stuck around much longer. We had both been talking about leaving, actually. We were sick of all the lies," Colby said, taking a deep, shaky breath. "She was one of the great ones, a natural, as they say, she thrived in high pressure situations, loved the daily life and death situations. She didn't like the lies, but she could deal with them. I doubt that anyone really likes the lies. They take a lot out of you. But, you know, she never let it get her down. I think that, if it weren't for me, she'd have been one of the ones that could have stayed at the CIA forever. She never said it, but I knew that I was the only thing standing between her and a director's desk."

"Yeah, but what kind of life is that, man? The lies and everything just to be a paper pusher. Maybe she didn't say it because she didn't care, because she'd rather have been with you than be a director." David gave Colby's shoulder another squeeze and Colby looked over at him.

"Yeah, you're right, I guess. But I'll never know now, hunh? The worst part is that even though in the few years that she was CIA, she saved thousands of lives, but no one, not even her family knew. She should have been buried with honors; instead all she got was an anonymous star on a wall. Her parents never even knew that their daughter was a hero. At her funeral-one of our CIA friends who went to college with her recorded it subtly, CIA style. Anyway, her mother said that if she had lived she would have made a great cop someday. If only they knew how right they were, that she was already a damn good agent," Colby said, sadness seeping into every word of his story.

"Brother, there is no way I can tell you how sorry I am. I guess that the DOJ assignment was just like a walk through hell for you, hunh?"

"Yeah. But if I tried really hard, I could ignore the fact that I was lying to everyone, because this time it was just like…I don't know, a part time job, it wasn't 24/7. Most of the time it was like I was just another normal FBI agent. I'm not actually sure what a normal FBI agent is defined as, but…" Colby trailed off and David smiled slightly at his partners attempt to lighten the mood somewhat. Neither spoke for a minute before Colby looked over at him "You know, she's buried here, in DC. Her family is from just outside the city. Being here…it's like she's everywhere again." Colby said, standing up and moving over to the window to stare out at the Washington DC skyline.

David pulled himself out of his chair and joined Colby by the window. They both stood there, watching the sun rise over the various monuments and drinking their coffee until Colby spoke several minutes later.

"Anyway, I can definitely pull some strings to get info on this, now that I know what strings I actually need to pull. I was barking up the NSA tree when I should have been going for all my old Black Ops contacts. I think that me getting shot is the best thing that has happened for this case so far." Colby smirked and David looked at him sharply.

"Man, I don't care how big of a break we got from you getting shot, I'd still rather you didn't."

"Nice to know you care Dave."

"You know, we're going to have to tell Don and everyone something. Whatever you want to say, I'll go along with, David told him and Colby inclined his head slightly.

"Thanks, man. I think that I'm going to go with the truth, only an abbreviated version. You know, without the whole part about how I was married to Amanda and everything."

"Man, how do you do it. How do you deal with it all?" David asked hesitantly.

"They train us to compartmentalize. And…it gets easier as time goes on. The pain, anyway. You learn to deal with the pain. But you never actually learn to deal with the lies. Just with the pain that they cause," Colby said softly and David wondered why he had never noticed that his best friend was so wise. Colby seemed to know what he was thinking and spoke again. "You also learn to hide the pain so that nobody can see it, no matter how well they know you. Hell, sometimes you even convince yourself that you're not in so much pain that every breath costs you."

"Well, if you ever need to talk, man. I'm here. Just so you know," David said.

"Actually…before we leave…I just….I'd like to visit her grave, actually. And I, ah…." Colby fumbled the words, clearly not used to asking anyone for help.

"Moral support?" David asked simply and Colby nodded gratefully.

"Thank you, David. It really means a lot."

"Did you want to go now, since we don't have to be in for another 3 or so hours? And I can't imagine that Don will be too pissed if we show up late, particularly given that we have just cracked this one wide open. What do you say we go get some breakfast then go to the cemetery before we head into the office?" David suggested gently.

"Yeah…yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, man." Colby said, touched by David's understanding and caring.

"You don't have to thank me." David said, clapping Colby on the back as he moved back to the table, leaving Colby to consider the city alone.

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	9. Chapter 9

_**Okay, so I wasn't going to update tonight however, I got a ton of reviews from supergirl02**__** right in a row, three for this fic alone, so big thanks to her, because it's always great to get feedback(especially in such large quantities!), and so I decided that, instead of sleeping or doing my homework that I'd post chapter 9 tonight just because I felt so loved! Remember that, y'all. Feedback motivates me to post instead of sleeping or doing my homework.**_

_**Big thanks, as always, to my beta VanishingP2000 for being awesome!**_

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Chapter 9

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The two men walked down the streets of downtown DC to a small café that Mark, the guy from the hotel desk, had recommended to them.

"Nice day. But still way too cold. I have been spoiled by Los Angeles," David said as he shoved his hands deeper into his jacket packets.

"I hear you, man. Nothin' makes you appreciate good old sunny Los Angeles like a nice, brisk East Coast day," Colby said sarcastically as he opened the door to _Uncommon Grounds _and they moved gratefully into the warmth of the café.

They both ordered their food and sat down at a table to wait for their food to be ready. Colby fiddled nervously with the number that the young woman at the counter had given them and David watched him do it for a few minutes before deciding that it had gone on long enough.

"Colby, hey, we don't have to do this if you don't want to. It's up to you, man, whatever you want to do, I'm game. Except for going and getting smashed, of course," David said and Colby laughed slightly.

"Yeah, I figured that was out of the question, along with just shooting something," Colby said sardonically.

"Hey, we can go to a shooting range and shoot the hell out of some targets if you want to," David said and Colby smirked.

"I was only kidding. But after the cemetery, that might be a good idea. I need to do this. And I need you to do me a favor, man. Make me do it. Don't let me talk my way out of it, no matter what I say. I _need_ to do this," Colby said, anguish coloring his words.

"All right. I will drag you kicking and screaming if I have to. Hell, I might even cuff you," David smirked.

"Knew I could count on you, buddy. Good to know you've got my six. And are willing to put a boot up it when necessary."

"Hey, anytime you need a kick in the ass, I'm happy to help you out, Colby. Really, I mean it when I say don't hesitate to ask. It will always be my pleasure," David said grinning.

"That's very comforting Dave. Really, it is. But if I actually wanted my ass really and truly kicked, I'd just call up Megan." Colby sniped back and David was more than happy to keep up the friendly banter if it kept his friends mind off of what they were about to do.

"Okay, point taken. Let me rephrase. Anytime that you want to get your ass kicked and actually survive the experience, I'm here," David said and by now they were both grinning and the elderly couple at the next table was looking at them in mild alarm.

"So…do you think that Sarah even knows that she's following in her big sister's footsteps? Colby wondered, turning his focus back to the case and David recognized his partners need to talk about the case and theorize, even if they got absolutely no where and just had the exact same conversation six or seven times over.

"Well, she seemed to kind of recognize you but I don't know if she actually figured out who you were. I mean, did you see the way that she was looking at you?" David said and Colby nodded thoughtfully.

"Yeah, I kind of think that her finding out about what Amanda did is kind of unavoidable, given the fact that she's kinda a legend in the underground, as those of us in it refer to it, particularly in…Oh, shit! Why the hell didn't I see this before?!" Colby said suddenly, smacking himself on the forehead.

"Wait, what? What didn't you see? What are you talking about, man?" David asked in confusion, reflecting briefly that he had spent a good deal of time being confused by things that Colby said over the past few days.

"Mockingbird! They weren't working _on_ Mockingbird, they were working _for_ Mockingbird!" Colby said hurriedly, his voice low so that only David could hear him. "All of the cells in our Black Ops division were named after birds. The director if the division had a bird watching hobby, obsession, whatever you want to call it, anyway, not the point, the point is that Mockingbird must be the name of the division in this area. I mean, I only ever knew the names of a couple of cells and DC wasn't one of them. And no, I can't tell the names or locations of the ones I do know."

"So, basically, we've been barking up the wrong tree?" David sighed.

"In the wrong damn forest." Colby said resignedly, taking a long swig of his coffee.

"So the real question is why are all these people from a Black Ops CIA cell in DC turning up dead in Los Angeles? And what is up with the NSA Mockingbird project thing?" David said and Colby looked at him thoughtfully.

"Maybe project Mockingbird is a joint NSA Mockingbird project. I don't know, but now that I know that I should be talking to my old Black Ops friends who stayed in the game, probably damn high up by now should probably be able to find out. And most of them owe me for various reasons. Or they're just willing to help out an old friend. You know, maybe they've expanded their little Black Ops program to involve NSA. Or it could be a new division, an antiterrorism cell, with the best of the CIA, NSA and whoever else. Homeland, maybe. The possibilities are limitless, really. We're never going to know exactly who is in it, that's how Black Ops works," Colby said, letting his head drop onto the table in frustration.

Before David had the chance to respond, their number was called and David got up to get their food, giving Colby a light pat on the top of his head as he went. When he got back to the table Colby still had his head resting on the table in defeat, so David put his own food down before giving Colby's head a light shove, causing Colby to lift his head off the table so that David was able to deposit the food in front of him.

"Thanks, Dave," Colby said and David nodded before they both dug into their food. They ate in silence, both mulling over the possibilities of Mockingbird and thinking about what they were about to do. David knew that they had to tell Don and the others as soon as possible, but they couldn't exactly have that conversation over the phone and Colby needed to visit his wife before he could dive into this case, otherwise it would eat him up. But the NCIS team…that would have to be handled very delicately.

Colby seemed to have read his mind because as he polished off the last of his pancakes.

"You know, this could be a problem, with NCIS, you know? I mean, what the hell am I supposed to tell them? I shouldn't have even told you, let alone telling Don and Megan, but the NCIS team….I don't know them. I can't trust them," Colby said, rubbing a hand over his face wearily. "I mean, they're definitely not cleared for this stuff and I just…I trust you guys, but honestly, the ME is nice, but he talks about everything, his assistant looks like a 5 year old girl could break him in 5 minutes, Agent McGee might last 10 minutes with the little girl, Officer David is a foreign operative-yeah, I know they're our allies, but still, there is a limit on this stuff…I think that Agent's Gibbs and DiNozzo can keep a secret-DiNozzo managed to keep a major undercover up under wraps from his team for almost a year and Gibbs doesn't seem like he shares anything-but I still hate the bastard. And, don't ask about how I know about Agent DiNozzo's op," Colby said, fiddling nervously with his spoon.

"Yeah, well, I think we should start with telling Don and Megan and going from there. Maybe we can tell them that it's classified above their level. But somehow I can't see Gibbs taking that lying down. Maybe just let Gibbs and DiNozzo in on it? I don't know. We'll figure it out later." David assured him as they paid for their food and left the café. They walked the few blocks back to the hotel in companionable silence and once they reached the hotel they grabbed their briefcases from the room before heading down to the parking garage and the car.

The silence continued in the car as they drove to the cemetery, broken only by Colby occasionally giving David directions. When David finally pulled the nondescript black FBI sedan up the cemetery and shut the car off he turned to look at his partner, who was sitting stock sill and staring straight ahead.

"So do you want company or do you need to do this alone?" David asked, causing Colby to cease his impression of a statue and look over at him.

"I, uh, I'd really rather not do this alone, so, uh…." Colby trailed off, looking slightly uncomfortable and David, knowing that his partner hated asking for help, simply nodded and unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car. After a few seconds Colby followed suit, albeit much more slowly.

The two men walked through the maze of grave markers, David letting Colby lead the way, but staying close by his shoulder. When they finally reached the grave, Colby bowed his head slightly, his eyes filling with tears. David stood a couple of feet behind him, slightly off to the left, close enough to offer support, but still giving Colby some space.

"You know, you'd have liked her, man. She was just so…she was fun, but she always got the job done. She always thought about everyone else before herself and she…she always did what she thought was right. She loved the thrills that come with the job, but she didn't do it for the adrenaline high, she did it to make the world a better place, to help people. She hated seeing innocent people hurt and did whatever she could to protect innocents. But damn, if you pissed her off, you had better watch out because she could kick your ass. She didn't take any crap from anyone," Colby said, a small smile playing on his lips as he stared down at the grave.

"She sounds like an amazing woman, man," David said quietly, giving Colby a light pat on his shoulder.

"Yeah…yeah, she was." Colby said, bending down in front of the grave stone and speaking quietly. "I love you, baby. Always. Bye, Ams." A single tear escaped his eye and slipped down his cheek as Colby kissed his fingers and then pressed them against the cool marble of the headstone. After resting his hand on the top of the stone for a few more seconds, he stood up, sniffing slightly before turning back to David. "Let's get out of here, brother." David inclined his head slightly and they made their way slowly back to the parked car.

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	10. Chapter 10

_**Big thanks to my beta VanishingP2000. And I still don't own anything, which is really quite depressing.**_

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Chapter 10

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They arrived at the Navy Yard at 11:45, having stopped to pick up lunch for the team on the way and had managed almost perfect timing. Once they were in the NCIS building they flashed their badges at the security guard at the entrance and they were waved through. They made their way up to the third floor conference room that they had been using in lieu of the FBI war room in Los Angeles. When they entered the room they found Megan and Don at one end of the table, poring over files, while Charlie and Amita were at the other end working on who knows what on a computer. Larry was nowhere to be found. Megan looked up when they entered, although Colby had his suspicions that they actually had her attention more because they had coming bearing food than anything else.

"We brought lunch," David said unnecessarily, as Megan had already gotten up quickly and relieved them of their burdens, inhaling the scent of the Chinese food deeply, her eyes closed with a reverent expression on her face.

"Hallelujah! I am starving!" she exclaimed happily and David and Colby exchanged smirks.

"So, where's our boy Larry?" David asked, looking around as though to confirm that Larry wasn't hiding behind the door or under the table or perhaps even on the ceiling. With Larry, one never did quite know what he was going to do next.

"With his new friend, Dr. Mallard. Sorry, _Ducky_," Amita said and Charlie shuddered slightly, causing Colby and David to shoot him puzzled looks and Don explained.

"Those two, together. Wow. It's like a convention of long winded, vague and metaphor happy scientists. Everything either of them says comes attached to a very long story, half the times the stories have absolutely nothing to do with what's actually going on. It's, uh, rather mind numbing and patience trying. So we, um, gently suggested that they go get some lunch and Agent Gibbs not so gently suggested that they…what was it that he said? Oh, yeah, that if they were going to talk about whimsical crap, they should do it somewhere else." Don said, with a small chuckle, as he moved over to Megan who was currently ferreting through the bag of Chinese takeout. Amita and Charlie also got up and walked across the conference room to the food and Megan began passing out the food to everyone, leaving Larry's order of white rice in the bag.

"Uh, hey, Charlie, Amita, why don't you go and find Larry and give him his lunch and take a lunch break, go and eat in the park or something. You guys have been stuck here all day," David suggested and Charlie and Amita quickly gathered up their laptops and the food and all but ran out of the conference room.

"Well, that was nice of you David. Don and I have been out of this room a ton today, thanks," Megan said sarcastically and Colby turned to David.

"I get the feeling that she's going to kill me, David."

"I won't let her, buddy. I think your day has been bad enough already," David said, patting Colby's shoulder reassuringly, causing Don and Megan to look between the two questioningly.

"Okay, guys, you might want to sit down for this..." Colby said, closing and locking the door carefully before all but falling into a chair across from where Megan and Don were now sitting, still looking at him curiously. David took a seat next to Colby, offering silent support.

"Okay, Granger, seriously, what is going on? Did you guys find something out about this Eric guy?" Megan asked, slightly unnerved by her teammates odd behavior.

"No, nothing on Eric yet. But, well, I figured out a lot about Sarah and Mockingbird. This isn't actually about an NSA project, it's about a CIA Black Ops cell, part of an entire Black Ops division, all of the cells are named after birds, the director of the division is kind of a bird nut, anyway, we're thinking that it might be a new cell within the division, a counterterrorism cell, with mega elite operatives from the NSA, CIA, probably Homeland and slew of other alphabet agencies, too. Thing is, Sarah's big sister Amanda, she was in this Black Ops division until she was killed seven and a half years ago. Only Amanda's family never knew…never knew a lot about their daughter." Colby's voice cracked slightly and he cleared his throat and Don looked at him appraisingly.

"And you know all this…how, exactly, Colby? And why is this Amanda girl a personal thing. And don't even bother saying that it isn't because it's obvious it is," Don asked, sharper then he had intended and Colby flinched almost imperceptibly.

"Look, I worked for one of these Black Ops cells during college, okay. Amanda was in the same unit, we went through training together, we were on the same team and, ah, we…she…she was my wife," Colby said quietly, bowing his head and taking a deep calming breath. Don opened his mouth to respond, but David cut him off.

"Don…don't," he said simply and Don looked at him for a moment before nodding almost imperceptibly. David's voice had carried a quiet warning and it seemed to be taking all of Colby's will power to keep himself together.

"Uh…anyway, her family never knew what she did, never even knew she was married…um…" Colby said, losing the train of what he had been saying and David quickly picked up where Colby had left off.

"Look, we already suspected Black Ops and honestly, Sarah's sister being in a division of Black Ops with all of the cells being named after birds and her talking about this case? There is no way it's a coincidence," David explained and Megan nodded.

"Yeah, I think we've finally got this. Well, the basic idea. We still have no idea what's actually going on. Colby, can you maybe, you know, see if you can get anything on this division's current activities, since you're one of their alumni and all?" Megan asked and Colby nodded.

"Yeah, I was going to see if any of my old teammates and friends from the good ole days are still working for the division. If they are, they're probably damn high up by now. They were always the best of the best and if they stuck around, they'd be on the fast track to top level," Colby explained as his cell phone chirped and he looked at the caller ID. He didn't recognize the number.

"Yeah, Granger," he said by way of greeting.

"FBI Special Agent Colby Granger?" a woman asked with out preamble or a greeting.

"Yes. And you are….?" Colby asked in response, wondering who this woman was.

"Your sister in law. We saw each other at the hospital last night. Georgetown University. I think you know who I am by now. I know why you're in town. And since we all know how well it went the last time you left the office for a meet, I'll come to you. I'll be in the NCIS lobby in twenty minutes. Only your friend from last night, Agent David Sinclair, is invited," she said and Colby quickly identified her as Sarah and it was clear that she did, in fact, know all about her sister. There was also no way Colby was shutting Don and Megan out again.

"No, that's not happening. The rest of my team is going to be in on it, too," Colby said firmly and he heard Sarah sigh over the phone line.

"Do you trust them? Agent Don Eppes and Agent Megan Reeves? None of the scientists though," she said reluctantly.

"Yeah, I trust them completely and I wasn't gonna bring in the smart squad anyway," Colby said and he heard Sarah snort.

"The smart squad? I see that they weren't overstating your sarcastic wit in all the stories."

"Stories, hunh?"

"Yeah, stories. You're a legend, Granger. You leave our game just to join the FBI and end up undercover as a Chinese spy within the agency, just because you happened to get your life saved by a guy that the Chinese turned. Not to mention what you did while you were still active."

"Good to know I made an impression," Colby said with a small laugh.

"Yeah, well, I'll see you in twenty minutes," Sarah said before the line went dead.

"And goodbye to you, too," Colby said to the dial tone before closing his phone and turning around to see the rest of the team all watching him with interest. "That was our mysterious friend Sarah. She'll be here in twenty minutes. Well, actually, she'll be in the lobby in twenty minutes. And she knows about Amanda and everything." Colby told them and David, Don and Megan all stared at him.

"And this…doesn't seem odd to you, Granger?" Megan asked, wondering how Colby could be so unperturbed by this.

"No. If Martin's worked with her, then she'd be looking at the case files from the LA murders and my name would have come up and she would have figured out how she knew me. It makes perfect sense to me," Colby shrugged nonchalantly.

"Okay. I'm so glad that this is logical to one of us, because if you ask me this is way too _Alias_," Don said and David and Megan stared at him. "What? Jennifer Garner in all those incredibly revealing outfits, plus gunfights and explosions. What's not to love? It was a favorite way of ours to pass time back in New Mexico," Don explained and Colby turned to smirk triumphantly at David who rolled his eyes.

"Okay, anyway, moving on from proving the theory that men spend most of their time thinking about sex, how about the case?" Megan said, rolling her eyes as well.

"Well, like I said she'll be here in twenty minutes. Only you guys are allowed, and you two-" Colby gestured to Don and Megan. "Are lucky to have gotten an invite. She didn't want you two there, I had to persuade her."

"Why was I lucky enough to get an invite to this happy little party?" David asked.

"I don't know, she saw you last night, I guess. Usually we don't like to have too many people at our Intel swaps, the more people, the more opportunities for the info to get leaked somehow. It's basic, really. The fewer people who know, the better. But you want more than one usually, so if one doesn't catch something the other will. Two is the optimal number, but one is usually preferred. It's You don't want more people than necessary, but at the same time you don't want to risk having info forgotten or have to do another swap. It's the sort of thing Charlie would have a math field day with, but we've got to do it more quickly, just eyeball it, really," Colby said, trying to explain it, but ended up leaving the others looking even more confused. He wondered briefly is this was how he looked after one of Charlie's math speeches.

"Okay, so, basically, you need to balance the need for secrecy with the need to make sure all the info is transferred," David said and Colby nodded.

"Right, so she's really not going to be happy with four people, hunh?" Don asked Colby.

"Nope, but she can just deal. I am not having this conversation sixteen times," Colby told them impassively.

"We should probably head down to meet her, make sure we're there when she arrives, we wouldn't want there to be any issues with security.

"Yeah, I'm thinking that just David and I should go down to meet her, all of us might make too big of a scene and it might…I don't want to say freak her out or scare her, because I doubt that she'd be scared or freaked out by you two, considering her chosen profession, but you know, spies, we just don't really like big crowds or obvious stuff. It's just a thing," Colby explained and Megan nodded.

"Yeah, I get what you're saying Granger. You secret agents like your covert, cloak and dagger stuff, you like to fly under the radar. We'll stay up here and, you know, stare at each other and wonder what the hell is going on," Megan quipped, causing the others to smirk.

"Yeah, sure. You just want a chance to eat before we have to get down to business." Colby said knowingly and Megan threw her pen at him. "Hey, I just call 'em as I see 'em, Reeves," Colby said, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

"Okay, Colby, let go, Megan, enjoy your lunch," David said, effectively ending their bantering and ushering Colby out the door and shutting it behind them, though not before Colby managed to slip in a sarcastic, yet still sharp, half salute aimed at Megan.

"Man, what is up with you two lately?" Don asked and Megan looked at him questioningly. "Ever since he came back you two have been like a two man comedy routine."

"We, uh, we came to the realization that we had more in common then we had thought. You know, he's the only one with clearance to know what I was doing for the DOJ. So, we do drinks on Saturday nights, talk about how much lies and secrets suck and everything. He's a damn good friend. He just…he'll always listen and you know, he just…he'll sit there and listen to me talk about my DOJ assignment and I know that it probably kills him to hear some of the things, but he just says that he'd rather have to hear a few unpleasant things than have me implode and quit or something. And when I need to focus on something other than all the crap in my head, he'll tell me all kinds of random stories or even lets me psycho analyze him," Megan said, smiling slightly.

"I didn't know that you guys had gotten so close. I guess that even this whole spy mess has a silver lining. If it wasn't for him, would I be down an agent right now Megan? Truthfully?" Don asked, studying Megan's face as she took a bite of her food. She swallowed before looking up at Don and answering.

"Honestly? Yeah, probably. I mean, I thought that this mess was going to end up being the straw that broke the camel's back, but I really think it ended up saving me. I took off the time right after, got my head back on a little and then Colby helped me get it back on the rest of the way and he's been helping me keep it on," Megan said, using the chopsticks to poke at her food, staring at it so that she didn't have to look at her boss.

"So…should I still be worried about losing you?" Don asked quietly and Megan finally looked up at him with a small, reassuring smile.

"No. And honestly, you do have Granger to thank for that. So don't hold the spy stuff against him. He really does hate it more than you can possibly imagine."

"Yeah, I can see that. But, I mean, he was married! I never saw that one coming." Don said.

"Yeah. And then she was killed. That's an awful lot of pain for one person to be carrying around for such a long time. I mean, can you imagine dealing with something like that alone for almost 8 years?" Megan said, shaking her head.

"Yeah, I know. I mean, I never suspected anything. Then again, I also never suspected that he was undercover as a triple agent with the Chinese, either, so that doesn't exactly inspire confidence in my ability to read the man," Don said sardonically.

"Come on, Don. It's his _job_ to be unreadable. I've only seen anything get to him a couple of times, the shooting at the FBI office is really the only time that I actually saw him openly affected by something, but David said that it was a sort of flashback to something that happened back in Afghanistan."

"Yeah, we really should consider using him undercover more often," Don quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

"Shut up and eat your lunch, Eppes," Megan rolled her eyes, taking another bite of her lunch.

* * *


	11. Chapter 11

_**Big thanks to my beta VanishingP200. I own neither NUMB3RS nor NCIS. Damn.**_

_**

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Chapter 11

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**_

David and Colby walked over to the elevators, Colby still smirking slightly and David shot him a sideways look. "Seriously, what is going on with you and Megan, you're acting like you're on _Saturday Night Live_ all the time."

"What are you talking about Dave?" Colby asked, looking over at his friend.

"Oh, seriously, ever since you got back you and Megan have been going at it like a couple of old college buddies," David said and Colby shrugged.

"We've realized that we've both got issues and she needed a friend, one that she could actually tell about her DOJ assignment. Which is all you are getting about that, by the way. And we discovered that we have a lot of fun together," Colby said and David knew he wasn't going to get anything, but couldn't resist needling Colby a little bit.

"So you two get together, paint your nails, do your hair?" David smirked and Colby shot him a dirty look.

"Nah, we drink," Colby said simply, knowing that this would get David's undivided attention and horror.

"Dear god, please tell me you haven't gotten her totally wasted and then gotten her to cheat on Fleinhardt!"

"Man, I am insulted that you think so little of me. With the drinking came talking, even some crying but no…jeez, David, you are so dirty." Colby said in a damn fine impression of outrage and righteous indignation. In fact, it was such an excellent impression that David actually looked somewhat ashamed.

"Sorry, it's just that, you know, uh…." David muttered and Colby snorted.

"Man, you are so easy to mess with." Colby laughed and David shot him a dirty look and shoved him slightly as the entered the elevator.

"So, hang on, when you said that you knew Ziva from Afghanistan, did you actually know her from Afghanistan, or…"

"Yeah, I worked with her in Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean that we hadn't worked together before. She knows that I was United States Black Ops, but she never knew what agency, let alone the division or cell name. We were just a couple of spies… spying," Colby told David sardonically.

"Sounds quaint," David said wryly and Colby chuckled. By now they had made their way down to the lobby and Colby was leaning casually against the wall and David had his hands in his pockets, both facing the entrance.

"Oh yeah, with the exception of the whole breaking into top secret government facilities and stealing their secrets and the gunfights, car chases, explosions and people trying to kill us all the time it was like every other working relationship," Colby said, sarcasm positively dripping from every syllable.

"You're very sarcastic today, aren't you man?" David commented and Colby simply raised his eyebrows slightly and sent him one of his trademark smartass smirks by way of response.

"Ah, here she is," Colby said, pushing his shoulder off the wall and walking over towards the young woman who had just come through the doors, David close behind him. She was wearing faded jeans that hugged her curves, a fitted black t-shirt with a tan cargo jacket and a black messenger bag slung under her shoulder. As Colby approached she held her hand out and shook Colby's hand, then David's, nodding her greeting to each. "Let's head back upstairs, shall we. Don't want to keep Don and Megan waiting any more then necessary."

"Yeah man, you're driving them crazy with all the keeping them out of the loop stuff." David smirked.

"Hey, I'm just glad that Don hasn't fired me. Or shot me. At least not yet, anyway," Colby said and David sent him a sideways look.

"He's not gonna fire you. He might use you for every single undercover op that comes along for the rest of eternity, but he's not gonna fire you. You're too good of an agent. Plus I'm thinking that at this point, given your new found friendship, Megan would probably kill him if he even tried," David told him reassuringly.

"Fear of Megan is a powerful motivator, man," Colby agreed with a short nod as the three of them got onto the elevator, Sarah silently observing the banter that was taking place between the two men.

"Yeah, pissing her off might well be the last thing that a person ever does," David agreed and Sarah snorted slightly, causing both men to turn and look at her.

"Sounds like she'd fit right in with us," Sarah told them simply, a small smile playing on her lips.

"Yeah, actually, she's right. Spies make for some pretty crazy chicks. And I say that in the most complementary way possible, of course," Colby assured Sarah, who just laughed.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that, seeing as how Amanda was one of the craziest ones, at least from all the stories I've heard."

"Yeah…yeah she was, uh, she was pretty insane," Colby agreed with a small smile, though David could still see pain clouding his eyes. The elevator doors opened to reveal an irate looking Agent Gibbs and Colby sighed, and muttered under his breath. "Fantastic."

"Agent Granger and Agent Sinclair. You want to tell me what the hell is going on?" He asked, his voice low and dangerous sounding. David swallowed somewhat nervously, but both Colby and Sarah seemed completely unaffected by Gibbs' angry glare.

"What do you mean, Agent Gibbs?" Colby asked coldly, meeting and matching Gibbs glare.

"I mean, who is this girl, for starters and why, exactly have you not been sharing any information with my team?" Gibbs snapped, barely keeping his anger in check.

"It's classified," Colby said smoothly, pushing past Gibbs and David and Sarah quickly followed behind him, leaving Gibbs standing in front of the elevator and Tony and McGee staring after them from where they were standing in Ziva's cubicle.

"I didn't think that anyone could stand up to Gibbs like that. I mean, he didn't even seem like he cared at all, like Gibbs was just asking him for the time or something," Tony said, impressed.

Ziva just continued to work, seemingly unperturbed, very similar to Colby's reaction to the entire situation, causing Tony to stare at her through narrowed eyes, which caused McGee to look between Gibbs, Tony and Ziva, his face scrunched up in confusion.

"Ziva…is there something that you'd like to share with the class about how you know Agent Granger?" Tony asked slowly, only to have Ziva ignore him completely. "Ziva!" He said, more sharply and Ziva finally looked up at him, annoyed.

"What, Tony? What would you like me to say, hmm? We have worked together, yes. On what, I cannot and will not tell you! So do not ask! All it will do is annoy me and you know perfectly well that you will not be able to get it out of me," Ziva told him before turning back to her work. Tony hesitated, before sighing in defeat and moving back to his desk. McGee just continued to stand there, mouth open and still completely oblivious as to what was going on. Ziva shot him a glare, which sent him scurrying back to his own workspace just as Gibbs came storming through the area and sitting down behind his desk, hitting his keyboard much harder than was strictly necessary for it to respond.

"Ah, Boss? Maybe Ziva can try talking to them. She seems to know something about what's going on," Tony said and Gibbs shifted his gaze over to Ziva, who just stared back at him impassively.

"Care to share your knowledge with the rest of us, Officer David?" Gibbs asked stonily, but Ziva just tilted her head to the side slightly.

"I would if I could, Agent Gibbs, however, I cannot. It is Agent Granger's business and it is also classified by several government agencies-" Ziva began, but Gibbs cut her off impatiently.

"Since when have you given a damn about what is and isn't being classified by US agencies?" Gibbs practically snarled in irritation.

"If you had let me finish, you might understand. As I was saying, it is highly classified by several agencies within more than one government. Israel being one of them. When my superiors at Mossad tell me that something is highly sensitive and requires special clearance to be divulged, I tend to listen," Ziva snapped back at Gibbs and turned back to the many files littering her desk, effectively ending the confrontation.

"Well, this is great. About half the people on this case know what's going on, but the rest of us are completely in the dark!" Gibbs growled.

"Look, Gibbs, I don't even know anything relevant to this case, I only know about Granger, and I can't see how what I know could possibly figure into this case. So just let it go! You do not get to nor do you need to know everything!" Ziva said, clearly irritated at this point.

Gibbs growled before sitting back down and continuing to abuse his computer in frustration. Gibbs did not like it when he was left out of the loop. Gibbs wanted to be the one who had all the answers and right now it seemed that he was one of the only ones without any at all.

* * *


	12. Chapter 12

_**Big thanks to my beta, VanishingP2000. And still I own absolutely nothing.**_

_** Chapter 12 **_

Colby and David led Sarah away from the bullpen and the seething Agent Gibbs and towards their makeshift war room, aka NCIS conference room number three. David sent Colby several covert glances as they walked, marveling at how Colby seemed completely unfazed by anything that Agent Gibbs said or did. And if you asked him, Agent Gibbs was one scary son of a bitch. Colby pretended not to notice the not-so-covert glances that his friends kept sending his way.

They entered the conference room turned war room and once again Colby closed and locked the door behind them. When Sarah looked at him half quizzically and half suspiciously, he explained.

"I'd rather no one walk in here in the middle of this, it has the potential to end incredibly awkwardly."

"Good point. But just keep in mind that I could have all of you unconscious in less than 30 seconds. Well, maybe not you Colby, you might take a little longer, maybe a minute or so, but the rest of you…." she warned, her voice pleasant, as though she was telling them the score of last night's baseball game, but it was clear that she meant every word.

"Right…so, do you want to take a seat and tell us why you're here?" Don said briskly and she narrowed her eyes at him.

"You're lucky to be in on this conversation, so I'd suggest that you don't act so superior and smug," she snapped at him and he looked taken aback, before falling back into his chair, looking appropriately subdued, though also slightly perturbed.

"Okay, so I'm assuming that Colby has told you that I'm his sister in law and a Black Ops CIA agent. I work for Mockingbird. We're an antiterrorism division that operates within the Blackbird Black Ops division. In addition to CIA Blackbird agents, we've also got people from the NSA, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence, along with most of the rest of the alphabet soup. It's the best of the best and the model of interagency cooperation. Too bad no one knows about it," she said, ironically.

"Yeah, Black Ops always have managed to be better at playing nice with others. Maybe that's because there's no bureaucrats involved. And no ones getting credit, anyway. We're all just there to do the job and go home. 'No guts, no glory' does not apply here. We live more by a 'lots of guts, absolutely no glory' kind of motto." Colby smirked.

"That about sums it up. Anyway, as you guys know, lately a lot of our agents and consultants have been disappearing, some of them turning up dead. Eight dead, to be exact. I know, you only know about seven, but last night, I was at the hospital talking to one of our agents who was attacked by this guy and survived. Barely. He died this morning. He never woke up so we don't know if he ever saw his attacker. So we have yet another dead end, no pun intended. But my superiors are hoping that we can do a joint, albeit unofficial, investigation, we figured that if Colby, one of the best agents in the history of our agency, trusts you guys, we can trust you, too. But you need to understand how sensitive this is," she explained, looking around the room.

"Okay, see here's the thing, we've got a math consultant-" Colby started but Sarah cut him off, shaking her head.

"No, not unless we actually have a reason and even then, we can't tell him everything, only what is absolutely necessary. It's not that I don't think we can trust him, it's just that this is very dangerous territory and if this guy is killing off Black Ops agents, there's no telling how far he'll go. And I honestly don't think that he would have any chance of holding up to interrogation," Sarah said and Colby nodded slightly, conceding the point.

"Okay, fair point. Continue."

"Anyway, we've lost both our Navy and Army contacts, along with half the NSA guys we've got and our main go between with Langley. But none of the Blackbird agents have been targeted so far, the agent that died this morning was one of Homeland's guys. This suggests to us that either they don't think they're good enough to take down a Blackbird Mockingbird-that's what we call ourselves-or they're trying to expose Mockingbird or that they're trying to cut off our connections to other agencies, which doesn't make any real sense, because they have to know that we're perfectly capable of operating without these other agencies. Which begs the question of whom the hell is this joker?" Sarah said and Colby looked at her thoughtfully.

"What if this guy doesn't actually know that Mockingbird is a Blackbird division, or at least, doesn't know who the Blackbird operatives working it are? What if he only knows about some of the people in the organization, which would explain why he hopped from one end of the country to the other. I'm guessing that there were more than six of your guys in LA?" Colby shot back, now in full brainstorming mode.

"Oh yeah. We've got an entire cell out there. Dozens of agents and even more support staff. This guy barely scratched the surface of our operatives and consultants out there. That's actually a pretty good theory, and honestly, that's all we've got right now. But, some of us have our theories on who's behind it."

"And those theories are…." Colby asked, spreading his hands slightly in a questioning gesture.

"Well, we don't actually have a name for him, just a title, really, _die Fuhrer_. We're betting that he's German."

"Gee, how ever did you come to _that_ conclusion?" Colby asked sarcastically.

"I don't know, it's just a hunch we've got, really," Sarah said, just as sarcastically, before turning serious again. "Look, before we get into this any farther, there are a few things you're really going to need to know. First, I've got another agent coming over here a little later to help out. Now before we get to the next point, you're going to want to sit down," she said and Colby's forehead scrunched in confusion, but he moved over to a chair and sat down in it, still looking confused and even a little bit worried.

"Okay, you want to tell me what's going on, because this whole cloak and dagger routine is becoming a bit too much, even for me," Colby said, his voice wavering ever so slightly at the end of the sentence and David sat down next to him, silently offering his support.

"Uh, well there is no really easy way to tell you this, but, well, Amanda is alive. Our dear director faked her death all those years ago. But he also faked your death, at least to her. See, she was pretty badly injured after that whole thing, which was why it was so easy to fake hers. He had her transferred to another unit once she got back, said that she had to be moved because they had faked her death to protect her because they had almost killed her and actually had killed you. So they moved her, kept her out of contact with everyone, her friends, family, literally everyone. By the time she figured out that she'd been lied to, it was too late to back out. She was a ghost, the perfect operative, she didn't exist, which made denying affiliation a whole hell of a lot easier. And she never really did let anyone get close to her again. I joined up and I heard all the stories and she was working for the DC Mockingbird cell and I was in the DC Blackbird cell. We ran into each other about a year after I made agent and that's when the whole thing blew. That was about 4 years ago, about three and a half years after her supposed death. I have never seen anyone as pissed off as she was. The first thing that she did was look you up, but as far as we could tell, you had that nice normal Law Enforcement job that you'd always wanted and she was still working Black Ops, she didn't want to complicate your life, it seemed like you had finally managed to move on and she said that just knowing that you were out and alive was enough."

"Amanda…Amanda's alive?" Colby gasped and he literally collapsed back into the chair and David, Don and Megan all looked at him in concern.

"Yeah. Look, she just, she didn't want to drag you back into the life, the lies and everything. And she knew that she couldn't go back, she was a dead woman, Black Ops was the only place left for her to be. And she knew that you would come back to it for her, but that you would hate what you were doing. She's been keeping pretty close tabs on you, you know. You should have seen her when we got wind of the whole Chinese Spy thing. She never believed that you were a traitor for a second, she was setting up an escape plan, that is, until the higher ups gave in and read her into your case. She was pissed. They had dragged you back into the quagmire. She was working with Kirkland, too, making sure that they were doing everything possible to get you out of it safe and, you know, not on death row."

"Um…okay, I, uh…" Colby fumbled over his words, unable to create a coherent statement.

"Look, I've got to go make a couple of calls; I'll give you a minute," Sarah said, moving over to the door and slipping out of it, closing it quietly behind her. Once she was gone Megan moved over to the side of the table where David and Colby were sitting as David scooted his chair towards Colby's chair, gripping his shoulder and Megan wrapped her arms around Colby's neck from behind, resting her forehead on top of Colby's light brown hair. Don just stood awkwardly on the other side of the table, unsure of what he should do. Megan and David were both much closer to Colby than he was and he didn't deal well with feelings, particularly when it was this level of emotion coming from his usually stoic agent.

"Colby, hey, you're going to be okay. It'll be okay, buddy," David was telling Colby softly as Megan rubbed Colby's chest consolingly. It was odd to see Colby so willing to take this kind of comfort. Colby had never before let his boss see any type of weakness from him, although Don suspected that Megan and David been witness to cracks in his tough guy shell, but from the helpless looks they were now exchanging, he doubted that either of them had ever seen him break down so completely. And none of them knew what to do to help him.

There was definitely more to Colby Granger than met the eye.

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	13. Chapter 13

_**We're reached the halfway point! Yay! As usual, I own absolutely nothing and I send out a big thanks to my incredibly amazing Beta, VanishingP2000.**_

**_Chapter 13 _**

By the time that Sarah slipped back into the room, Colby had managed to pull himself together somewhat, with the help of David and Megan. Colby was still leaning back in the chair and Megan still had her hands around his neck and resting on his chest and shoulder and her chin against Colby's head. David was still sitting next to Colby, writing down the cliff notes version of the case, with both Megan and Colby quietly consulting him and adding things, while Don was sitting directly across from them, silently watching his team try to piece the case together, still mulling over the morning's events in his head.

All four of them looked up as the door closed softly behind Sarah. "She's on her way. She should be here in about a half an hour," she said, looking at Colby, who nodded slightly in response. "I'm going for coffee," she said, shortly. "One of you will need to be in the lobby in thirty minutes to let Amanda and I in." She left the room once again and everyone turned to look at Colby, who proceeded to stare at the legal pad that they had been documenting the key points of the case on. Megan tightened her grip on Colby slightly, but it was unclear to Don if this was to give him extra comfort or to reassure herself that Colby was still there.

'Uh, let's, let's just keep summarizing what we know," Colby said huskily and the others agreed, knowing that Colby need a distraction. The group continued to theorize and discuss the case Don even contributing every now and again.

Twenty-five minutes later Colby looked at the clock on the wall before getting up resignedly, seemingly unaware of Megan's hands still wrapped around his neck. David and Megan also stood, David because he intended on pushing Colby back down into the seat and going to collect Sarah and Amanda himself and Megan because Colby had pulled her up with him when he stood and they were now at an awkward angle not only because Megan was at least a head shorter than him, but also because the chair was now in between them, causing Colby to be bent over backwards and have his knees bent slightly and Megan was standing on the very tips of her toes.

"Megan, you know that I love you dearly, however- I'm having trouble with the whole breathing thing." Colby chocked out and Megan loosed her grip on his neck slightly muttering an apology. "Megan, you're really going to have to let me go completely so that I can go down and tell security to let them into the building."

"I'll go," David said, the unspoken desire to avoid a huge scene in the middle of the NCIS lobby clearly communicated and Megan pulled Colby back down into the chair, which was possible only because he did not resist. If he had truly wanted to remain standing, it would have been impossible for Megan to pull him down, especially given her current position. As David left he gently hit Colby's chest and sent Megan a look that said that she might want to disentangle herself from Colby before his wife showed up. She sent him a look that quite clearly said that she wasn't moving unless Colby wanted her to. Don rolled his eyes slightly at Megan's protectiveness of their friend, but Colby seemed utterly oblivious to the entire exchange, once again showing incredible interest in the grain of NCIS's conference table.

For lack of anything better to do and unable to stand there awkwardly watching Colby stare at the table and Megan simply holding him in silence, alternately studying Colby's face and the piece of wood that had Colby so enamored, Don grabbed a random carton of food and began to pick at it. He had no idea what he was eating, but it gave him something to do.

The three stayed that way until the door opened a few minutes later and David came in followed by Sarah and another woman, presumably Amanda. Don looked up curiously, while Megan shifted her head slightly to also watch the new addition with interest, while Colby made no sign that he had head the door open and simply continued to attempt to bore a hole in the wood with his eyes. One of the most incredibly awkward silences in memory followed and David quietly moved back over to his seat next to Colby, while Sarah and Amanda stood by the door, Amanda looking at Megan and Colby, pain clearly displayed on her face. Finally Sarah could no longer take the silence and she moved towards the table.

"So, um, Amanda is the director of Blackbird division Mockingbird. We figure that if we combine our resources and contacts we should be able to figure out what is going on. Ah, Agent Reeves, you're a profiler, what can you tell us about what you think this guy's motives are or his personality or anything, really," Sarah asked, the air still thick with awkwardness. Colby had yet to acknowledge Amanda's presence.

"Well, he obviously wants to get a message across to you, but that's all that I've really got at this point." Megan spoke into Colby's hair causing it to ruffle with every word but he didn't seem to notice it.

"Well, it doesn't really matter about his personality, I guess, no matter what it is it could be one of any number of people. You'll find that most spies have very similar personalities," Sarah stated, sitting down at the table, leaving an empty chair between herself and Colby. Whether this was to give Amanda a place next to Colby should he choose to acknowledge her existence sometime in the foreseeable future or just because she wanted some separation between herself and Colby and his friends was anyone's guess. Another bout of unprecedented awkward silence ensued.

"Alright, I can't take this! This is completely insane!" Megan burst out, her voice rising several pitches and sounding slightly hysterical. Colby winced at the high pitch and volume of her outburst, as her mouth was only about an inch from his ear. "Sorry," she muttered softly and back to her normal pitch before releasing Colby, who had finally come out of his revere and was now simply staring at Amanda. Megan cleared her throat. "David, Don, Sarah, why don't we go do…something," she said vaguely, wanting to give Colby and Amanda privacy, but unable to come up with a logical task that they would need to attend to. The rest of them murmured their agreement and made their way to the door, Megan planting a long kiss on Colby's head. David rested his hand on his friend's shoulder for a moment and Colby gripped his hand tightly for a second, letting him know that he'd be fine. Once the door had closed Colby slowly swiveled his chair around to face Amanda who was looking at him, her eyes shining with tears that she was far to proud to allow to fall.

"Hey, Colby," she said, her voice thick with emotion.

"Hey, Ams. It's, uh, it's been a while," Colby said softly.

"Yeah. It has. I…look, Colby, I am so sorry. They told me that you were dead, I visited your grave, by the time I realized that I'd been lied to, it was too late. It had been almost four years, you had left Black Ops, joined the Army and by then you had signed up with the FBI. You had managed to move on with your life and I was so deep in. There was no way that we could have been together and you could have stayed at the FBI, I was dead. I just…I thought it was better for me to just stay dead. I mean, I-" Amanda rambled, but was cut off by Colby getting up and moving swiftly across the room and grabbing her face, kissing her hard. The kiss was long and passionate and they didn't come up for air until they heard the door open. They broke apart and looked at the door to see David standing there looking rather embarrassed.

"Sorry, but we've got another one," he told them and they both nodded, Amanda running a hand through her hair wearily and Colby grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair before they both followed David out of the room, Colby's hand resting lightly on the small of her back.

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	14. Chapter 14

Big thanks to my beta, VanishingP2000. I still own nothing.

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_**Chapter 14**_

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Gibbs practically growled in frustration as Agent Eppes told him that another body had been found and that there were a couple more agents working with them. They remained distinctly vague and unspecific about exactly which agency these new agents hailed from. The look on Ziva's face told him that she did hold that knowledge, but that he wasn't going to find out. Which just pissed him off. And he hadn't even been in a remotely good mood to begin with. The murderous look on his face actually caused McGee to literally take a step back in fear.

"So, is NCIS actually going to be included in this investigation at some point, or is the FBI and god knows who else just going to cut us out in our own damn building!" Gibbs thundered as Colby, David and Amanda entered the bullpen. David winced slightly at the volume and fury in his voice, while Colby and Amanda looked eerily serene. Sarah and Ziva also wore similar expression of varying disinterest, although Ziva was showing a slight interest in Amanda's appearance. In truth, Ziva was absolutely shocked to see Amanda alive again, but her many years of Mossad training allowed her to keep most of the surprise out of her expression.

Tony also looked largely unaffected because his extensive undercover experience and his equally extensive pissed off Gibbs experience allowed him to keep a mostly straight face as looked between the four unruffled agents. Out of all of them, Ziva was the one showing the most emotion, which was surprising as Ziva was usually the one that showed the least. If these four played poker, Ziva would probably lose. Using his keen investigative skills, Tony inferred that Agent Granger and the other two women, who were both more than beautiful, the younger looking one with light brown hair and bright blue eyes and the older with fiery red hair-too bright to be natural but not too obtrusive and deep grayish green eyes. They were hot, but apparently unavailable, judging by Agent Granger's hand resting on the red head's back and her head resting against his chest and the ring on the others left ring finger.

"Do I at least get some names for these two!" Gibbs asked, still fuming.

"Yes, but only because if you keep referring to us as 'you two' one of us will end up killing you," Amanda told him, raising her eyebrows slightly and everyone except for the ever oblivious McGee knew that it was not an idle threat. Gibbs nodded sharply and almost imperceptibly and Amanda continued. "She's Agent Sarah Rodriguez and I'm Agent Amanda Granger," she told them before nudging Colby slightly and they both turned and walked away from the NCIS team's workspace, followed closely by Sarah and David. Megan sent a curious look towards Ziva, who was watching Amanda leave with barely noticeable shock on her face, which Megan picked up on only because she, as a psychological profiler, was trained pick up on subtle changes in facial expressions. Don tapped Megan's arm lightly and they followed the rest of the group, albeit somewhat more slowly. Tony and Gibbs exchanged one of their trademark looks which Ziva had never truly understood and they both reached down and pulled open their top desk draws and retrieved their guns, clipping them to their belts before heading for the elevator on the opposite side of the bullpen from the FBI team and Ziva and McGee quickly followed the two senior agent's leads, running to catch up with them before the elevator departed. As the elevator doors opened they revealed FBI Senior Special Agent Tobias Fornell.

"Oh great. More surprises and cryptic shit from the FBI," Tony muttered sarcastically and to everyone's surprise Gibbs didn't whack the back of his head because he completely agreed with the sarcastic sentiment and underlying irritation.

"Tobias. To what do we owe the…pleasure?" Gibbs asked as Fornell looked at Tony curiously.

"What do you mean, DiNotso?" Fornell asked, mispronouncing Tony's last name as he always insisted on doing.

"What do you mean, what do I mean?" Tony shot right back, although he looked just as confused by Fornell's statement as Fornell had been by his statement.

"What do you mean by 'more surprises and cryptic shit' DiNotso?" Fornell rolled his eyes slightly at the younger man's antics.

"Wait, you're not here about our joint case with the FBI's LA office?" Gibbs asked, narrowing his eyes questioningly.

"What case? I'm here unofficially. An old friend of mine was murdered about an hour ago. His name is… was ATF Special Agent Mark Howe. He had Mockingbird carved into his back and I heard that you had a case with the same MO, I just wanted you to keep me in the loop, cause I know how you hate to share," Fornell said.

"Well then you are here about the LA FBI's case," Tony told him as they all piled on the elevator, more cramped than usual because they were squishing five people in the elevator along with all of the team's gear.

"What the hell are you on about DiNotso? Are you just trying to be dense and irritating or are you actually oblivious?" Fornell asked in irritation and Tony rolled his eyes.

"The FBI is working with us on this. They had six bodies back in LA with the exact same MO. And they've totally taken over the case, even though it was kinda technically theirs to begin with, but anyway, they've totally shut us out of the case completely and we have absolutely no idea what is even going on," Tony said dryly and Fornell stared at him.

"Wait, Gibbs _let_ the FBI shut NCIS out of the investigation? That has got to be a first," Fornell said, raising his eyebrows and looking over at Gibbs.

"I didn't _let_ them do anything, Tobias. They've got spies coming out of the woodwork not to mention a damn traitor on the team," Gibbs growled, fuming.

"What do you mean 'spies'? As in plural, multiple spies?" Fornell asked and McGee's look of confusion increased. He had no idea what the three senior agents were talking about. Ziva also remained silent up to that point, although she was watching the conversation with interest and following it closely.

"Yes, spies. Two female spies, Agent Amanda Granger and Agent Sarah Rodriguez. Very elite, if my extensive experience with spies is any judge. They show absolutely no emotion and Sarah, the younger one does not appear to be much older than college age. The older one, Amanda, is around 30. Both very young for their apparent skill levels." Ziva summarized quickly and succinctly in an extremely matter of fact voice, causing the rest of the elevator's occupants, except for Tony who had come to the same conclusions as she had, to stare at her in awe. "What? I am a spy; it is my job to assess the skill levels of those around me. I can't not do it," she defended. She did not mention that she knew for a fact that Amanda was 30 and high level Black Ops. Not to mention supposedly dead for over 7 years. Than again, being dead do make for an extremely good cover.

"You know, Gibbs, sometimes Officer David is scary as hell. Not to mention that fact that apparently DiNotso doesn't find her observations odd, which is also rather frightening and Agent McGee looks like he's going to pass out. Seriously, Jethro, have you ever considered just how freaky your people are," Tobias commented wryly and Gibbs smirked while McGee looked slightly insulted and Ziva and Tony grinned at each other before giving each other a jubilant high five, indicating that they were extremely proud of their scariness.

"Yep. That's how I train them, well, except for McGee. His comes naturally and I'm still trying to beat it out of him," Gibbs told him.

"I guess that having so many spies around him scares him a little. Particularly several spies that are scarier than our dear Officer David," Tony smirked and McGee blushed slightly while Ziva gave him one of her small, slightly dangerous smiles.

"Okay, moving away from the terror that my team inspires in the hearts of FBI agents and back to why you're here. Why don't you take a stab at getting the LA FBI team to tell you something, because they basically hate me because I went off on Granger and called him a traitor. I'm fairly certain that Agent Sinclair honestly wants to kill me," Gibbs said with his usual sly 'I've pissed someone off' grin.

"Absolutely shocking. You always did have a special gift of pissing the hell out of FBI agents. So out of the FBI agents, who should I try to hit up for information?"

"Well, Granger's a definite no; he is way too good at keeping secrets, obviously. Sinclair will follow Granger's lead when it comes to this stuff, so asking him will be no good. I get the feeling that he other two will also follow Granger's lead, but perhaps not as staunchly. Eppes or Reeves might tell you in the spirit of cooperation or because they feel bad about your friend, but I don't know. I have not seen enough of them to know. However, try Eppes first because if you try to go around him, Reeves will tell him and then neither of them will give you anything," Ziva said, causing Fornell to look at her warily once again.

"Seriously, I'm not sure if she's scarier when she silent or when she's talking," Fornell said, causing Tony to snort slightly and Ziva to send him a death glare, which he promptly ignored. "But thank you for your character analysis Officer David. I think that I will try Agent Eppes first."

"Well, that's good Tobias. But now, if you'll excuse us, we have a murder to investigate," Gibbs said with his usual irritation when someone was holding him up during an investigation as the elevator doors opened and he swept out of it, the rest of the team hot on his heels.

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	15. Chapter 15

I still own jack. And a big thanks to my wonderful beta, VanishingP2000.

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Chapter 15

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When the NCIS team arrived at the crime scene with Fornell in tow they found the FBI's LA team along with Agent Rodriguez and Agent Granger already there, the Agents Granger were in deep conversation with a man and a woman, both of whom had guns clipped to their belts along with ATF badges. Even more of the alphabet had decided to join the party and Gibbs really did not play well with others.

Agent Rodriguez was a few feet away from them, also engrossed in deep conversation with another man and judging by the way that he had his hand on her neck, Tony was willing to bet the farm (that is, if he actually had a farm to bet, which he didn't, but that was hardly the point) that this was the other Agent Rodriguez, Sarah's husband. Agents Eppes, Reeves and Sinclair were all wandering around the scene, though they seemed to be almost avoiding the body which was odd, because usually you would start with and concentrate on and right around the body because, well, it was the body. As they approached the crime scene tape Gibbs pulled out his ID and flashed it at the Metro cop that was controlling access to the scene, the cop didn't pull up the tape or move to allow them entrance.

"NCIS." Gibbs told him, but the cop still didn't show any sign of moving so Gibbs continued. "Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

"What does the Navy want with a dead ATF agent?" The cop asked suspiciously and Gibbs fought the urge to just shoot the man. Too much paperwork.

"We have reason to believe that this is the work of a serial killer and one of victims was a Navy commander," Gibbs snarled out, but the cop didn't recoil in fear as most would when faced with the Gibbs death glare.

"Well, I've got strict orders to allow no one else on this crime scene. There are almost too many people on there already, so unless Agents Eppes or Granger give express permission for you to come on this scene there is no way. You can glare all you want agent, but it's not going to change anything," the cop told him matter-of-factly and Ducky, who had just arrived with Palmer, raised his eyebrows. There sure were a lot of people willing to stand up to Gibbs since this case had started and it was throwing everyone, including Gibbs himself, for a loop.

"Look, we're working a joint with Agent Eppes' team on this case, so would you just talk to him, damn it," Gibbs growled and the cop sighed dramatically before calling over Don and Colby.

"Ah, Agent Gibbs, look, I really can't have your team or ME on this crime scene. Too many cooks in the kitchen, you understand," Don told them and Gibbs seethed.

"No, I don't understand. This case is just as much an NCIS case as an FBI case."

"Actually it's not. Look, only one of the victims so far was Navy and he was on assignment with the NSA. This right here is the death of an ATF agent which makes it, once again our case, with the ATF helping out. And honestly, one Navy Commander out of a string of now 8 murders, all of whom were government agents does not make this your jurisdiction. We're allowing you to work on this case to a certain extent, but this goes way above your clearance level. Deal with it," Granger snapped, his continuing dislike of Gibbs clear.

"Do you really want to play jurisdiction with me, Agent Granger? Because I can tell you right now that you will not win!" Gibbs hissed dangerously, causing Colby to raise his eyebrows in an 'oh, really?' gesture.

"Actually, you won't. See, when I tell that that it's hyper classified and that it's a matter of National Security and that you're getting in my way, they'll not only give us full jurisdiction, but they might even throw you in jail for obstruction. See, it's amazing what top level clearance and an FBI Medal of Meritorious Conduct will get you. Not to mention having a good friend who calls the director of the NSA, Robert Tompkins- you've heard of him, haven't you agent Gibbs?-'Bob'. So, Special Agent Gibbs, you do NOT want to get into a jurisdictional pissing match with us on this one," Colby retorted with carefully controlled anger in his voice and Gibbs actually had to put a good deal of effort into not physically taking a step back from Granger. Colby disliked mentioning the award that he had received from the FBI after he had completed his undercover operation, but he just didn't have the patience to deal with Agent Gibbs' control issues at the moment and playing the dreaded hero card seemed like a fairly good way to end this argument quickly.

The raw fury coloring each and every one of Granger's words was actually slightly frightening to him and he realized that he might have actually met a fed that could best him when it came to a jurisdiction fight- not that you'd know it from looking at him. His personality had reminded him of DiNozzo almost, appearing laid back and casual- what one might call the joker of the group- to those that didn't know him, able to give the appearance of the good natured and likeable idiot, all the while being the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing. Ducky and Palmer actually did take a few steps away from the argument and McGee had practically run back to the truck, vaguely and pathetically muttering something about leaving something inside it. Ziva and Tony, who were both used to Gibbs' fury and who knew that the rage was not directed at them, remained where they were a foot or so behind Gibbs, one on either side of him.

"Fine. But you know, it would be nice if we had something to work on, beside sitting around and wondering what it is you can't tell us while staring at a box on our computers telling us that we don't have the clearance to see what the hell is going on," Gibbs said irritably, but finally backing down, recognizing that this was a fight that he was not going to win.

"Yeah, okay, we'll let you know as soon as we need something run down that you have clearance for, but this whole case is just full of red tape. There's so much red and black that it's like a gothic party," Don said and Colby snorted slightly, having managed to once again push his anger to the back of his mind. Don shot him a quick sideways look, surprised by the young agent's self control and apparent sudden switch from fury to good humor. It occurred to him that he had never actually seen him lose control, even though everyone else-himself, David, Megan and even Charlie had all lost it during cases, but he had never seen Colby lose it.

"Fine. Come on, let's head back. I guess you guys can go home on time tonight, since we have absolutely nothing that we can do," Gibbs said as he turned on his heel and headed back to the sedan with Tony and Fornell on his heels and Ziva and McGee and Palmer and Ducky headed off to their respective trucks. As the three vehicles pulled away from the lot Megan and David moved over to where Colby, Don and the DC Metro cop were standing. "Hey, how did you get them to leave that fast and without physical violence?" Megan asked surprised.

"Well, basically, Special Agent Gibbs threatened to get into a, what did you call it Colby? A 'jurisdictional pissing contest', I think was how he put it and Colby pointed out that only one of the victims was Navy and that it was all way above his clearance level. And then he dropped Charlie's Robert 'Bob' Tompkins card and his hero card on him. Plus Colby was a little scary in general," Don told them and Megan and David both looked at Colby, who simply shrugged and moved over to where Sarah, Amanda, the assumed Agent Jake Rodriguez and the two ATF agents' were in deep conversation.

"What do you mean, Colby was scary, Don?" Megan asked quietly and Don paused for a few seconds, considering what to tell them.

"I don't know, it was like a controlled rage, one that he wouldn't have shown if he didn't want to. It was…weird. Then, thirty seconds later, he's laughing at my rather lame joke. It's like he's got an on/off switch for his emotions. I mean, has anyone ever actually seen him lose it before? It was just like one minute he probably could have killed Gibbs and the next it was like we were all just having a casual conversation over a couple of beers. It was insane," Don said, staring over at Colby, who had his arms wrapped around Amanda with his chin resting on top of her head as they both talked with the other agents.

"Yeah, well, it does fit him. I mean, come on Don, he is a spy, he would have to be really, really good at hiding his emotions and compartmentalizing things," Megan said, her profiler side taking over.

"Yeah, I just…it was surprising, you know, to actually see it all. I've never seen that side of him," Don shook his head slightly before moving off to talk to some of the witnesses, leaving David and Megan standing by the yellow tape to wonder at Colby's recent behavior.

"I guess Colby is just one big enigma, hunh?" David said and Megan shot him a look.

"Yeah, but one thing is for sure. He has always been on our side, which is a comforting though. I wouldn't want to be the one to cross him."

"Yeah, he has. The problem I had with it before was that he was a traitor and I didn't want to admit that I had given up on him so easily, that I had so little faith in him, so it was just easier to be mad at him. But he's always been on our side and honestly, the shit that's been going on; I understand why he didn't tell us. Plus, his previously dead wife that was buried as someone who was never married could not have been a pleasant topic of conversation for him. I just think that I understand his motives better now, because I've actually considered them, as opposed to just being busy feeling pissed off and betrayed," David said softly, so that none of the various cops and civilians milling around the outside of the crime scene could hear.

"I think that you've grown since the original Colby Gate- don't ask, it was a thing that Larry came up with," Megan said and David laughed at the 'Colby Gate' comment and Megan couldn't help but chuckle slightly as well.

"That's an interesting one; Fleinhardt is defiantly a unique guy. Just don't let Colby or any of the rest of the Black Ops club hear you refer to it that way," David smirked. They both moved off to continue to process the scene as well and shortly after the Black Ops club, as David had named them, also dispersed, the two AFT agents and Colby moved over to the body while Amanda, Sarah and Don started looking through the various files in the trunk of the car.

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	16. Chapter 16

A quick note: there is NO Tiva in this story. Some people apparently perceived Tiva in some of my recent chapters and I can assure you that it is not intended to be that. I simply have Tony and Ziva portrayed doing their usual innocent flirting banter. I dislike Tiva (sorry to all you Tiva shippers, but I think that it kills the awesome team/friendship dynamic that they've got going on. I don't want romance from them. I want banter and innocent flirting, ergo; I wrote them doing just that.)

Big thanks to my wonderful beta, VanishingP2000. I don't own NUMB3RS or NCIS. Damn.

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Chapter 16

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The body of ATF Special Agent Robert Howe was sprawled across the backseat of his dark gray Ford Explorer with the back of his shirt ripped open, the deep red word _Mockingbird _standing out starkly against his pale skin. It was clear from the almost complete lack of blood marring the words that the bullet to the brain had been administered before the killer had started his carving project.

"Damn it. I don't get it though, in LA he went after high rankers, the three Black Ops guys that they killed were all some of our original agents, all senior field agents. Then there was the Army Colonel and the highest ranking CIA and NSA liaisons. But Commander Martins was a consultant, at best. He only did a little work for us and he didn't even know what it was for and Agent Howe was a bomb expert, a brand new addition to Mockingbird. And I literally mean brand new, he's only been with us for about three months. It doesn't make sense, why take out a bunch of high ups in LA, then leave and go to DC and take out a low level bomb specialist and a passing consultant? There were still a lot of high ups in LA and there are even more out here in DC. His chosen targets make no sense," the female ATF agent said and the male agent nodded.

"Yeah, you've got a point, Mia. But that just makes this guy even more dangerous, because we have no idea who he is going to go after next."

"I'm thinking that maybe this guy doesn't actually know who all is in Mockingbird and that they're just maybe going after who they know, hoping to draw attention to Mockingbird or something." Colby said and the other two looked at him thoughtfully.

"You know, that's actually a really good theory. Jared, pull all of the files related to these guys and who they worked with. Cross reference the names of people that they worked with, particularly formers and temporaries. Se if anything comes up, maybe we'll get lucky." Mia said and Jared nodded already striding off towards one of the black sedans that were lined up a few rows over from the parking spot that Special Agent Howe's car was occupying. Mia and Colby watched as the car pulled out of the parking lot. Amanda walked over to them and spoke to Colby.

"Hey, so we've got all the files from the trunk packed up and ready to go. Jake's going to take them to the car and then they're going to head back to the NCIS building, but one of your G-men is going to have to go with them so that they can actually get into the building."

"Yeah, um, hang on." Colby walked over to Megan, who smiled up at him from where she was kneeling by a cluster of cigarette butts. "Hey. So can you go back to the NCIS office with Mia and Jake? They're taking the files from Howe's trunk back and they need someone to get them into the building. Top secret clearance apparently only counts if you can actually officially admit that you work for the government," Colby said sardonically and Megan laughed.

"Sure. That means that I get first dibs on the rest of the Chinese food," Megan smiled as she stood up and pulled her gloves off.

"Thanks. By the way, the guy with Sarah there is her husband, Jake Rodriguez, you probably already figured that one out, but I just though I'd let you know."

"Yeah, my keen investigative skills led me to that conclusion. Also the file had a picture of him, which helped," Megan retorted smartly and Colby snorted.

"And sarcastic Megan has finally made an appearance." Colby smirked and turned to walk back over to Amanda and Sarah who were still searching the car and Megan kicked him lightly, leaving a shoeprint of the bottom of his shirt.

"You missed my ass by a little bit there, Reeves," he grinned at her and she just raised an eyebrow at him.

"Who says I was even aiming for your ass, Granger?"

"Well, you always say that you can kick my ass six ways to Sunday. You've never once said that you can kick my lower back six ways to Sunday," Colby told her triumphantly, stopping and turning back around to send her his trademark smartass grin.

"Well that's because saying that I could kick your ass six ways to Sunday sounds better, kicking your lower back region six ways to Sunday just sounds stupid, Granger. Try using the incredible brain power that it's rumored you possess."

"Sounds like you doubt my intelligence. I'm wounded, Reeves, I really am." Colby accented his point by clutching at his heart in an overly dramatic gesture.

"Uh hunh. I'm sure you are Colby.

"I am. Just because I'm not a genius like Fleinhardt or the Wiz kid doesn't make me a moron. Speaking of Fleinhardt…" Colby began suggestively but Megan just rolled her eyes and turned back towards the cars.

"I'll see you back at NCIS later," Megan said, still smiling as she moved off towards the sedans where Mia and Jake were waiting, files in hand, leaving Colby chuckling slightly and David laughing silently from where he was standing a few feet away.

"You two are completely insane, you do know that, right man?" David chortled and Colby smirked over at him.

"Yep. That sentiment had been thrown our way many, many times recently."

"Yeah, I'll just bet it has," David muttered good naturedly, Megan and Colby's banter had lightened the moods of all the agents on the crime scene; particularly the FBI agents who were running on very limited sleep. Don had been laughing softly at his agent's antics and even the spies were smiling in amusement. Amanda, much to the others surprise didn't appear to have any issue with her husband's close relationship with Megan and was laughing quietly at the verbal sparring that had been taking place in front of her. Colby always managed to lighten things up no matter what was happening.

"People, apparently, tend to find a couple of feds hanging out in a country bar a couple times a week on random nights and times and only have a couple of drinks each, yet laughing like we were drunk off our asses to be weird and disturbing, apparently," Colby said in mock confusion.

"I have no idea why they might think that," David replied sarcastically.

"Yeah, I know, I don't get it either. Some people are just so old fashioned. They apparently think that just because we are law enforcement officers we can't have a good time," Colby rolled his eyes at this.

"Man, anyone that shows up regularly several times a week with no discernable pattern and acts completely smashed after a drink or two would be crazy in my book. The fact that they had guns issued to them by the federal government might make me, one, concerned about the whole acting like they escaped from an insane asylum and having a firearm and two, question my faith in the intelligence of our government and the reliability of Law Enforcement as a whole because they actually they gave the two crazy people said guns," David told him and Colby gave a small head jerk, acknowledging the logic of the statement.

"Okay, I can see how that might cause concern about the reliability of the justice system," Colby laughed as they both turned their attention back to the crime scene. "So, I've got Megan going back with Mia- that is, ATF Special Agent Mia Evans, the other ATF agent is Special Agent Jared Vaughn- and Jake- Mockingbird Agent Jake Rodriguez, Sarah's husband- to look over the files that were in the car, see if anything is missing, what it says yadda, yadda. Jake is going to pull the files on who all these guys worked with and who would have had access to them, the whole nine yards, you know, see if we can find a common name in the files, maybe get an actual suspect or lead, which would be a definite first for this case," Colby told David and Don, who both nodded.

"A lead would be really nice. A real suspect would be like a nice little early Christmas gift," David said.

"Yeah, well, let's just hope that we don't actually have to wait until Christmas for a suspect," Don commented dryly and Colby raised his eyebrows slightly.

"Well, it's not too long of a wait. Only a couple of weeks. But there might be several more murders before then and I don't really want to spend the rest of the month dealing with Special Agent Gibbs," Colby said, his nose twitching slightly as he said Agent Gibbs' name. His distaste for the man was still clear as day.

"Why not, he seems so fond of you, after all," David said, trying and failing to keep a straight face.

"Oh, yeah. He seems to absolutely adore me. We could be best pals," Colby replied, sarcasm practically dripping off of each and every syllable and the rest of the team laughed. "The only person here that he likes more than me is you, David, and that's only because you tried to kill him earlier in the conference room."

"Yeah, well, he's an ass and he also lives on the complete other side of the country, so whatever. Plus I'm told that he hates all other Federal Agencies, particularly the FBI and particularly when the FBI takes over one of his cases."

"Well, he can just get the hell over himself. I don't care how good of an agent he is, he's still a bastard who lacks any kind of tact or social skills," Colby said, shaking his head slightly. His biggest pet peeve was people who thought that they could just run everyone else over because they were good at their job. Sure, he probably took care of his team and they probably liked him well enough, but it wouldn't kill him to be even a little polite to other people.

"Yeah, I have no idea why he would think that you would still be in the FBI if you were a traitor. I mean, how moronic does he think we are? This isn't like where if you get busted for crack you can serve in the military instead of in jail. We don't let spies serve their time at the FBI," David rolled his eyes, also clearly still annoyed at Agent Gibbs' assumptions earlier in the day.

"Well, if you two could restrain yourselves from killing him that would be just great. You can feel free to grab some pictures of him and go to the firing range and go crazy, but just don't actually shoot _him_. Too much paperwork, you know. Otherwise I'd probably cheer you on," Don smirked and Colby and David laughed as the group made their way to the last two black sedans in the lot. Amanda was leaning against one and Colby broke away from David and Don and moved over to her.

"Hey. So, I'm heading back to the office for a little to check up on everything and pull some files. Sarah's coming with me; we'll meet you back at the Navy Yard later. Mia and Jake may not be able to get in without escorts, but I sure as hell can. Mostly because the director of NCIS, Director Shepard, is a good friend, so it won't be any problem for me to get myself and Sarah in. I already talked to her when we first got there earlier and she gave us a couple of all access visitor passes," she smirked and Colby let out a short laugh.

"Gotta love those connections."

"Yep. I'll see you later," she said, kissing him lightly on the lips and he wrapped his arm around her back and pulled her in close to him, deepening the kiss. Sarah had simply rolled her eyes at their public display of affection as she simply got in the car and dialed a number on her cell phone and spoke in the mouthpiece, determinedly not looking at the couple's make out session. Don and David stood awkwardly by, trying hard not to stare, but unable to stop watching. This was yet another side of Colby that was new to them. Amanda finally broke away and got into her car, Colby holding onto her hand for as long as was physically possible without actually following her over to the car. As the car pulled away Colby became aware of the fact that both Don and David were smirking, trying hard and failing miserably to keep straight faces.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You two are just jealous," he said dismissively, although the slight pink tinge on his cheeks told a completely different story. The other two men, unable to hold it in any longer burst out laughing, causing Colby to roll his eyes. "Whatever. And people are confused as to why Megan and I are federal agents. But yet no one ever asks about you two."

"Well, see, that's because most of the time David and I act completely normal. Okay, mostly normal. Anyway, it's just when we're around you that we act immature," Don justified and Colby simply raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, considering the fact that we work together, I guess that means you two jokers act immature most of the time. And I find it so offensive that you can call Megan and me immature. Let's not forget that we both have clearance higher than either of yours," Colby retorted and neither Don nor David could come up with a response. Colby smirked triumphantly and headed around to the drivers side door of the final sedan and climbed in. As he started the ignition David slid into the passenger seat beside him and Don got into the back seat behind David.

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	17. Chapter 17

Hangs head in shame. Wow. Sorry for the mad long lag time between updates. I can explain, honest. See, I was on vacation this last week and I was planning on updating before I left, but see, here's the funny bit: I, for some reason, thought that I was leaving Monday afternoon when, in fact, I was leaving Sunday morning. I don't know how. It's probably due to the fact that we changed our plans about 8 times, but you never know. Anyway, I discovered my miscalculation on Saturday morning, which would have given me plenty of time to pack and get everything in order (yep. I'm one of those procrastinating packers) were it not for the fact that I had already promised to go prom dress shopping with my friend Saturday afternoon and that took up my entire afternoon and I didn't get started on packing until Saturday night, leaving me with no time to update. And I had no internet all vacation (guess what my email inbox looked like when I got back last night. I'll give you a hint: I almost cried.) So I am really, really sorry for the delay and I will try to update at lest once more this week (I'm aiming for 3 total updates this week, however, RL has an annoying tendency to come out of left field and kick my ass)

I own nothing and I send a huge thank you out to my absolutely wonderful beta, VanishingP2000!

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Chapter 17

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Colby started the car and pulled out as David and Don pulled on their seatbelts and clutched at the cars handles as Colby catapulted the car around the corner and out of the parking lot.

"Jesus, Granger, this is not the Indianapolis 500!" Don exclaimed as he was practically defenestrated, making him regret his decision to leave his window down as Colby spun the wheel around and pressed the gas. Don had absolutely no idea how, but Colby somehow managed to keep the car from fishtailing or spinning out.

"Oh, stop be so over dramatic. Its fine," Colby said nonchalantly and David looked over at him in mild horror.

"Dude, seriously, it's like you're being tailed by the grim reaper and are trying to drive your way out of it!" David cried as Colby pulled onto the Beltway, pressing harder on the gas pedal and glancing in the rearview mirror as he cut across four lanes, causing several other motorists to slam on their brakes and lay on their horns.

"It ain't the grim reaper who's following us, David. At least, I hope not," Colby said grimly, glancing in the rearview again and David looked in the side mirror in time to see a black SUV follow them across the lanes. "He was sitting across from the parking lot all day. I assumed someone had parked their car there, but then it pulled out after us."

"Shit. Why us, though? Why not one of the other cars?" Don asked, leaning to the right slightly and also looked at the reflection of the car in the side mirror.

"Who knows and honestly, who cares at the moment? We can figure it out later. Right now, I'm a little busy trying to make sure that he doesn't follow us anywhere important. Or, you know, get us into a fatal crash in the process. Who wants to take a field trip to The White House? Or maybe the Pentagon or something. Anywhere except where we actually want to go," Colby said distractedly as he switched lanes again, still glancing from the road in front of him to his rearview mirrors and back again.

"Why do I have the feeling that you've done this a lot?" Don asked resignedly, still gripping the handle above the window.

"Probably because I have," Colby replied, still clearly only half paying attention to the conversation, most of his focus concentrated on the road, weaving in and out of traffic in an attempt to lose their tail. Which would have been a hell of a lot easier if it wasn't the one time of the day when the Beltway wasn't jammed to capacity and the black SUV was having almost no problem keeping up with Colby's erratic driving techniques.

"How has this guy not crashed?" David wondered out loud as the SUV swerved into the next lane causing another car to slam on their brakes to avoid a collision. Barely. "No, wait, better question, how have _we_ not crashed yet?" Colby ignored the comment as he jerked the steering wheel to the left and pulled in front of an eighteen wheeler with maybe two feet of clearance.

"Uh, David, maybe we should just let him drive. We're less likely to die if he's completely focused on the road and driving," Don told him and David silently agreed. Colby continued to weave expertly through the traffic, the black SUV close behind him for the next several minutes. All three of them looked around at the sound of sirens and the black SUV disappeared off an exit ramp.

"KLU1967," Colby said as he slowed the car down and crossed to the next lane causing David to look at him curiously. "The license plate number," he explained and Don pulled out his cell phone and called Megan to have her check up on the plate.

"50 bucks says that they got a call about someone driving erratically," David said ironically and Colby rolled his eyes at him as he pulled the car over to the side of the road as Don hung up. Colby pulled out his FBI ID as the Virginia State Trooper approached their car. He rolled down the window and before he had the chance to say anything the Trooper spoke irritably.

"Have you got any idea how fast you were going? 95 miles per hour. That's 30 miles over the speed limit. Not to mention the fact that we received several reports of you driving like a lunatic," the man said with a strong southern drawl and Colby fought the urge to roll his eyes in frustration. On the plus side, the officers appearance had gotten rid of the mysterious black SUV in a hurry.

"Look, officer, I can explain this," Colby began but the officer cut him off.

"Trust me, son, I have heard every explanation in the book and I have yet to be impressed enough by one to let you slide on something a serious as this," the officer said haughtily and Colby was finding it hard to resist the powerful urge to strangle the bonehead.

"Look, I-" Colby tried again, but once again was forestalled by the Trooper.

"So unless there is someone dying or having a baby in the back of your car, which there does not appear to be, there is absolutely no way that you are getting out of this without one dozy of a ticket," the Trooper assured him and Colby spoke more quickly this time in order to avoid being interrupted again- not that he had any intention of not completing his statement this time whether the cop started talking again or not.

"I'm a federal agent," Colby held up his ID to demonstrate his point. "We all are. We were being tailed and I was attempting to lose him."

"Well, I have to say that is actually a new one. Let me see your ID," the officer said, still somewhat suspicious and Colby dutifully handed his ID wallet to the Trooper who studied it carefully. "Okay, Special Agent Granger, it looks like you are who you say you are. But I still have to run your plates, you understand, its standard procedure," Colby nodded and the officer headed back to his car to check their plates. After a few moments he returned. "Alright Special Agent Granger, everything seems to be in order. Just…try not to kill anyone," the officer said and Don had a sudden coughing fit in the back seat.

"Yeah, our sentiments exactly," David muttered sardonically and Colby shot them both a quick dirty look each.

"Thank you," Colby said pointedly, clearly speaking more to his two snickering teammates than to the State Trooper. "And thank you, officer," Colby said, this time talking directly to the Trooper as he handed Colby his ID back and the officer bowed his head slightly to hide the small smirk on his face.

"Take care, Sir," the officer said and he turned and waked back to his patrol car, shaking his head slightly and chuckling.

"Well, I am so glad that we could brighten his day," Colby muttered sarcastically, sending both David and Don another dirty glance as he pulled back out into traffic. "Same goes for you two," this just caused them to lose the last of their self control and burst out laughing.

"Sorry, man, but you have got to see the humor in this. I mean, we're feds and we just got dressed down by a local yokel," David said and Colby rolled his eyes again.

"He's not a 'local yokel'; he's a trooper, not middle of nowhere county Sherriff."

"Whatever, he's still below us in the gun toting law enforcement food chain," Don agreed with David and Colby opted not to reply and simply stared straight ahead at the road, now driving at what could be considered a relatively safe speed and actually using turn signals when he changed lanes. He did, however, continue to glance in all of his mirrors rather more frequently than a normal person would. He pulled up to a Starbucks a few blocks from the Navy Yard and David looked over at him in confusion.

"Why are we…?" he started but Colby didn't bother to wait for him to finish his question before answering.

"One, just to make sure that we didn't pick up another, more subtle tail and two, after that little adventure, I really need some coffee. Strong coffee," Colby smirked and the other two laughed as they all got out of the car. Their good mood pretty much ended when they entered the coffee shop and saw Special Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo sitting at a table. Unfortunately, they also saw Colby, David and Don.

"Special Agents Granger, Sinclair and Eppes, I would say that it's good to see you, but my mother taught me to never lie," DiNozzo smirked and Colby's upper lip twitched slightly, but his face was otherwise devoid of emotion as he simply turned and headed for the counter and his much needed caffeine fix.

"I wouldn't screw with him right now. He's not exactly in the mood," Don advised and David nodded. Gibbs just rolled his eyes irritably.

"And this is my problem why?"

"Well, because, he just had to drive like a maniac to get rid of a tail and then got pulled over by a Virginia State Trooper who gave him a lecture on unsafe driving," Don told him as David sniffed slightly in distaste as he followed Colby over to the counter and ordered his coffee as well.

"Heh, Boss, remember when you got pulled over by a Maryland Trooper for reckless driving. I thought he was gonna cry once you were done with him," Tony said, smiling fondly at the memory of the aforementioned event. Gibbs reached over the table and clipped DiNozzo sharply on the back of his head. "Shutting up now, Boss," Tony said, rubbing the back of his head absently and taking another sip of his coffee. Don just shook his head slightly, not understanding Gibbs' apparent choice of administrative reprimand, but made no comment. It seemed that perhaps there was room in the world for another Gary Walker, even if they did have to reside on opposite coasts of the country.

"Well, DiNozzo, I think we're done here. Let's head back to the office," Gibbs said and Tony nodded. "Special Agent Eppes," Gibbs said by way of parting, nodding sharply and turning on his heel and heading out of the Starbucks. DiNozzo smiled slightly at him, also nodding, but in a much friendlier manner as he followed Agent Gibbs out of the coffee shop and Don shook his head again slightly. NCIS agents were definitely a piece of work. Or maybe it was just Special Agent Gibbs, as Agent DiNozzo seemed nice enough-most of the time- and Agent McGee was a typical junior agent. Officer David wasn't even an actual NCIS agent, but she seemed a great deal friendlier than Gibbs, although probably less so when angered, considering that she was a trained Mossad agent. In fact, Don was willing to bet that if forced to choose, it would be better to piss off Agent Gibbs than Officer David.

"Here you go, Don," Colby said, handing Don one of the coffees that he was holding as David sat down in one of the chairs at the table that the NCIS Special Agents had just vacated and Colby followed suit. He noticed that neither sat where Gibbs had been sitting. David sat at one of the two chairs that had been empty and Colby sat down next to him where DiNozzo had been.

"Thanks," Don said as he sat down in the other previously unoccupied chair as Colby popped the top off of his coffee and blew on it to try and cool it down a little. Drinking his coffee black did have its downside. David had already dumped copious amounts of cream and sugar into both his and Don's cups, while Colby had only thrown in a half a packet of sugar to his. After a moment Colby's cell phone began to ring and he pulled the phone off of his belt and glanced at the caller ID.

"It's Megan," he said before flipping the phone open and putting it up to his ear. "Hey, Megan." His eyebrows knitted in confusion as he listened to what she was saying. "So, wait, what you're saying is that the SUV that was following us none too subtly was one of ours? An FBI SUV?" Colby asked incredulously and both Don and David looked up sharply, both wearing similar expressions of disbelief as Colby. "Okay, what's the name that it's signed out to?" Colby pulled a pen out of his pocket and scribbled something quickly down on a napkin in a nearly illegible scrawl. "Alright, got it. Thanks, Megan." Colby said before hanging up and looked up at the other two.

"Well? Who the hell is the SUV signed out to?" David asked impatiently.

"FBI Special Agent Ron Sacks, DC Office. Wait for who he works under," Colby said and Don and David looked at him expectantly. "Special Agent Tobias Fornell." They both looked at him blankly and he sighed before continuing. "The guy that was with the NCIS team at the crime scene."

"Why would someone whose boss is working with NCIS on this need to follow us back to NCIS?" Colby asked and David tilted his head thoughtfully.

"Maybe he didn't know that his boss was working on it. I got the vibe that Fornell was there in a more unofficial capacity, not least because we were notified that the FBI DC office was joining us and that there was only him, not team or partner. Maybe he knew the victim," Colby said thoughtfully as he took a tentative sip of his coffee, wincing slightly as the still scolding hot coffee burnt his tongue and he pulled the cup away from his lips to continue blowing on it.

"Hmm. Yeah, that's possible. Something we should definitely check out when we get back to the office," Don said thoughtfully before sending Colby a sideways glance. "So how well do you know Officer David, Colby?"

"Why?" Colby asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Well, it would be much easier to just ask her if Fornell is on this officially or unofficially as opposed to going through the motions with the Admin morons, which is going to take us hours and probably make whoever gets stuck doing it want to go on a mass murder spree. And if he is there unofficially and Sacks is rogue or whatever, we don't want to draw unneeded attention to the situation. Now, if it turns out that Fornell's team is officially on this case, then we call the Hoovers and ask them what the hell is going on and why they're having an agent follow us Kamikaze style," Don explained and Colby sighed resignedly and nodded.

"Alright. I'll talk to her when we go back. But Gibbs will be very pissed if he finds out that I'm going around him to get information. I'll have to get her on her own. Since this was your big idea, I'll let you figure out how, Boss. Oh, and by the way, Don. Megan said that if you're going to call her to ask her to run something down, answer your phone when she calls you back," Colby smirked over at Don who grimaced slightly and he dug in his suit pocket for his phone. He continued to search through all of his pockets for it, coming up empty.

"Damn. I must have left it in the car. I forgot to put it back in my pocket, what with worry if you were going to either kill us or get us arrested," Don said to Colby, who glowered at him.

"Hey, less insulting my driving, more planning," he said pointedly and Don sighed. This was not going to be easy. The group sat in silence for a few minutes, all trying to think of a way to get Officer David out from under the watchful hawk eye of Special Agent Gibbs.

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	18. Chapter 18

Sorry about the space between updates, I know I said that I'd try to update a couple of times last week and that kind of went out the window when I got a huge paper assigned to me and I had to set up my college orientation among other college prep stuff. My AP European History exam is in a little less than 2 weeks has panic attack so it will most likely remain at once a week (unless I really need an excuse to take a break) but after that I might be able to update more quickly, but what with graduation and prom coming up rather more quickly than expected, I don't know how busy I'll be. Plus that whole 'getting ready to more to college. Just thought I'd let y'all know that I haven't forgotten this at all, in fact it is all beta'd now and I just have to basically go through and fine tune some of my plot lines and stuff before I post the chapters.

Big Thanks to my wonderful beta VanishingP2000. Also I own nothing, except my OC characters of which there are too many to list individually.

And guys, please, please, please let me know your thoughts on this, good, bad, indifferent, whatever. This is my first fic of such massive length and I would really like to know what y'all think about it.

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Chapter 18

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"We could fake a medical emergency," David suggested and both Colby and Don stared at him and Colby gave him a 'what for?' look, causing David to hold up his hands in surrender. "Hey, it's not like you two were coming up with any brilliant plans!" he defended and Colby sighed, sinking back into his chair. They had been debating the various ways to get Ziva alone to ask her about Fornell. He suddenly sat up and whacked himself in the forehead so suddenly that both Don and David jumped slightly. "Ziva and I hugged when we first got into DC!" he exclaimed excitedly and Don and David looked at him blankly.

"Okay… and this helps us… how, again, Colby?" David asked and Colby hurried on excitedly.

"Why don't I just ask her if she wants to catch up over dinner or coffee or something? I mean, it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that we're old friends. Oh, wait, that might actually mean that Gibbs hasn't figured out that we know each other," Colby said dryly, taking the opportunity to take a dig at Gibbs.

"Alright, let's go with that, mostly because it's the best we've got. And that probably should have been the obvious solution. Some investigators we are," Don said wryly and the other two chuckled. Don drained the last of his coffee and walked over to the counter and ordered a dozen more coffees, but the girl working at the counter didn't even bat an eyelash, she was clearly used to feds making large orders here. David and Colby also downed the final dregs of their coffees and went over to help Don get all the coffee for the team, the other agents and geek squad ready.

"Hey, Don, you ordered one too many," David told him, counting the cups.

"No I didn't," Don said simply, popping the top off of a random cup of coffee and dumped in a large amount of French vanilla cream and a couple of sugars per Charlie's preference.

"Don, there's three of us, Megan, Larry, Charlie and Amita along with the other Agent Granger, both Agent Rodriguez and uh, the ATF agent, Evans, I think. That's only eleven. You ordered a dozen coffees," David replied.

"The last one is for Officer David. Colby, you can catch up with your old friend in the NCIS break room when we get back, over said cup of coffee. How does Officer David take her coffee, Colby?" Don explained and Colby grinned.

"Nice, Don. She takes it the same way I do, black with a little sugar. It seems to be the traditional spy coffee order. Well, some just take it completely black. Not the point."

"Alright, Fleinhardt takes his with like, fifty sugars, right?" David said as he popped the lid off another coffee and pawed at the basket of sugar packets and Colby snorted.

"Close, only about a dozen or so. With the amount of coffee he drinks, I am truly amazed that he hasn't ended up in a diabetic coma yet. It's a medical miracle," Colby shook his head in disbelief and David nodded.

"Well, the high level of sugar in his bloodstream would definitely explain a lot," Don said sardonically causing David and Colby to snicker.

"Very true," Colby laughed in agreement. They continued popping tops off of coffee and adding each of their friends's preferred additives. Once they were finished they headed back out to the car, David was holding one of the coffee carriers and Don had two of them, while Colby jingled the keys somewhat nervously as they walked out to where he had parked the car on the street and glancing around suspiciously at the rest of the cars parked along the street. As the three piled back into the car, Colby's eyes continued to dart around in an almost paranoid fashion behind his dark sunglasses and both David and Don were also looking around for suspicious behavior or cars. Particularly the black SUV.

As they pulled out of their spot Colby looked into all the mirrors for a possible tail, but didn't notice anything. "Well, it looks like Sacks was our only problem, I don't see anything, so I think we're good to go," Colby told them, the relief evident in his voice.

"Well that's good," Don said, stating the obvious as they pulled up to the guard post at the Navy Yard entrance. They all pulled out their FBI ID jackets and handed them over to the Marine on duty at the guard station. The guard studied each of them carefully, glancing up at each of them in turn to confirm that they were the agents shown in the photos. After a few minutes he nodded his approval and pressed a button inside the guard station, causing the gate to open with a buzz and he waved them through. Colby pulled the car into the NCIS parking lot in the same spot where it had been earlier. They made their way to the conference turned war room where everyone else was assembled.

They handed the coffees out to everyone, leaving four cups in one of the carriers for Sarah, Jared, Amanda and Ziva. Megan had pulled the file on Agent Sacks and she handed all of them a copy of it. They flipped the files open and skimmed through them. After a moment Colby dropped his copy onto the table and grabbed Ziva's coffee from the carrier and picked his back up from the table before heading out of the room wordlessly, causing everyone to look around at Don and David in confusion.

"He's going to talk to Ziva about what capacity Fornell is here in, official or otherwise." Don explained to the room at large and everyone made signs of understanding as they turned their attentions back to the various things that they were currently working on. David and Don both sat down at the corner of the table closest to the door and continued to read through FBI Special Agent Ron Sacks rather long file.

"It seems that he has one colorful history with NCIS that involves a murder investigation a couple of years ago revolving around Special Agent DiNozzo and then another investigation into Officer David for murder and espionage about six months later. There is some seriously bad blood going on between this NCIS team and Agent Sacks," David commented a few minutes later and Don flipped through his copy of the file to the section on his interactions with NCIS and raised his eyebrows as he read through it quickly.

"Yeah, but I don't know how that would factor in if he's rogue on this. You'd think that he'd know we were working with NCIS and not need to follow us. I mean, he could find a whole slew of official channels that he could have gotten that information from," Don said just as Colby reentered the room.

"Unless he was trying to get us to crash and kill ourselves, of course," Colby suggested lightly, causing Megan, Don and David to look up, both slightly disturbed and thoughtful.

"Okay, fair point, but why would he be trying to kill us?" Don asked and Colby shrugged.

"I don't know, I was just throwing the possibility out there. According to Ziva, Fornell is here in a completely unofficial capacity. He was apparently very good friends with Special Agent Howe and Agent Gibbs is just doing a friend a favor, keeping him in the loop on the investigation, you know," Colby explained, sitting down and taking another sip of his coffee. Judging by how little he had to tip the cup he and Ziva had spent very little time drinking coffee and most of the catch up session talking.

"So there is no way that Sacks should have been anywhere near that crime scene, basically?" Megan asked and Colby nodded, leaning back in the chair next to David's and pulling his copy of Sacks' file towards him and opening it to a random page and starting to read it.

The group lapsed into silence again while they all continued to read the file, commenting every once in a while. The only other sound was the rustling of papers from where Mia and Jake were looking through the files from Special Agent Howe's car truck and typing coming from where Charlie, Amita and Larry were working away on their computers. What exactly they were actually working on was anyone's guess.

"Hey, check this out! There's a section missing from this file, I don't know what it is, though, its not one of our files, it's a bunch of FBI files. It says 'Janus List on the tab," Mia told the rest of the group and every one from the FBI's Los Angeles team looked up quickly in shock. Colby shot up out of his chair and across the room to where Sarah was sitting on the floor by a file box. She jumped slightly startled by the suddenness of his movements. David had jumped up and was only a step and a half behind Colby. Don just sat there and stared while Megan rolled her chair over to them, albeit moving much more slowly then Colby and David. Colby had grabbed the file from Sarah's hands and flipped though all of the names on the tabs of the folders in the file while David looked over his shoulder nervously.

"Okay, what the hell is going on? Why are you all freaking out over this? Isn't the Janus list some giant list of double agents or something?" Mia asked, obviously very confused.

"Son of a bitch," Colby muttered, closing the file and throwing it down on to the table and walking back over to his chair and sitting back down heavily in his chair and running his hand through his hair in frustration.

"Shit." David echoed and everyone except for Mia and Jake knew exactly whose file it was that was missing from the Janus List folder.

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	19. Chapter 19

Big Thanks to my wonderful beta, VanishingP2000. I own nothing but my numerous OCs.

Please let me know what you think, the good the bad and the ugly. I always love to hear people's suggestions and constructive criticism, as well as what y'all liked.

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Chapter 19

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"Oh, damn it. This is bad," Megan said rubbing her temples in frustration.

"Okay, seriously, what are you all freaking out about?" Mia asked in irritation.

"The file missing is Colby's. He was on the Janus List," Don explained, his hand covering his eyes.

"Wait, but why would Colby have been on the Janus List? I thought it was a list of double agents?" Mia asked them, confusion still evident in her voice.

"Well, basically, Colby was undercover as a double agent for the Chinese, it's a long, involved story that pretty much ends with him being a triple agent working to flush out an actual mole high up in the DOJ and being tortured on a Chinese freighter." Don summarized quickly and Colby sighed.

"You could have left out that last bit, Don," he muttered as Mia and Jake both stared at him.

"Tortured how, exactly, Colby?" Mia asked, her eyes narrowing at Colby who closed his eyes in defeat and David heard him mutter something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "Crap."

"Uh…" Colby said inarticulately, thinking fast and trying to come up with a convincing answer that wasn't the truth. Unfortunately, Don mistook his lack of desire to tell Mia what actually happened for inability to talk about the events in general.

"Torture drugs, Tubocurarine, Quinuclidinyl Benzilate and Potassium Chloride," Don said quietly and Colby once again closed his eyes in something akin to anguish and David and Megan both shot Don withering glares and he sent them back a confused look.

"Colby, what the hell? You didn't think to ever mention that little tidbit?" Mia practically shrieked and Colby winced, both at the high pitched noise and the volume as well as the actual words.

"Sorry, Mia, I just, uh, I didn't think it was something that was really necessary to make you worry about. I didn't want to freak you out," Colby said quietly shrinking back into the chair and away from the ATF agent's fury.

"Are you kidding me, Colby? When I called I asked if you were okay and you said that you were! You lied to me! You were tortured! With drugs! Again!" she yelled, catching the attention of the rest of the team and causing Colby to close his eyes in torment once again.

"Again?!" Megan and David cried at the same time staring at Colby in shock as he somehow managed to sink even farther back into the chair as though trying to somehow disappear into it and escape from all of his friend's accusing glances.

"Colby, what does she mean by again?" Megan asked quietly, her voice right next to Colby's ear and he jumped, having not noticed her come to stand that close to him. He reluctantly opened his eyes and turned his head slightly to look at her.

"Did, uh, did you guys watch the tape from the freighter?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, but still everyone heard him and David, Megan and Don all nodded grimly. They had watched the tape that Lancer had made of his systematic torture of Colby and it had been one of the hardest things that any of them had ever had to do. Megan had broken down a few hours in and they had stopped for a while so that she could pull herself together.

During that time both Don and Megan had gone to CalSci, Megan seeking comfort in Larry and Don to visit Charlie, watching silently as he and Amita worked enthusiastically on s problem. David had gone down to the FBI gym and beat the ever living shit out of a punching bag and had come back up to the conference room where they had been watching the tape with bloody bandages on his knuckles, but neither of the others had commented. The hardest part of the tape had been watching David doing CPR on Colby and then being pushed out of the way by the paramedics and watching them shock him, his body jerking upwards with each successive shock, trying to get his heart started again.

"Remember when Lancer told me that he was about to use quinuclidinyl benzilate and I knew what the effects were?" Colby said, still speaking at a volume that was barely above a whisper and Megan gasped in horror as her hand flew up to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, god, Colby…" she murmured tearfully through her hand and Colby pulled her down onto his lap and wrapped his arm around her comfortingly. Megan immediately threw her arms around his neck in a death grip as she sniffed into his shirt. Torture was definitely Megan's weakness at this point and knowing that one of her best friends had been tortured once was hard enough, but knowing that it was a repeated event was almost unbearable.

"Hey, it's okay, Megan, I'm okay. I promise," he muttered into her hair comfortingly, both completely unaware of Amanda and Sarah's arrival into the room. Amanda looked at the pair with an unreadable expression. After a few minutes Megan finally calmed herself down with the help of Colby's comforting words muttered in her ear and she wiped her eyes stood back up again. Then she noticed Amanda standing by the door.

"Oh, uh, this is so not what it looked like," she said quickly with a small, nervous laugh and Colby spun his chair around to see who she was talking to.

"She's right. It's not, Ams. Trust me on this one, her boyfriend is sitting three feet away from us and even though he's a geek and I could totally take him- no offence, Fleinhardt- I am so not the dumb," Colby said shooting Larry an apologetic look at his geek comment, which earned him a smack on his shoulder from Megan. "What, if the pocket protector fits…" Colby smirked, causing Don and David to burst out laughing, lifting much of the tension from the room.

"Okay," she said, seeming to accept this explanation and causing everyone to stare at her.

"Just like that? You just believe him when he says that it was innocent?" Amita asked incredulously.

"Yes. I trust him. And I really wouldn't be in any position to complain even if it wasn't innocent, considering everything," Amanda paused and smirked at Colby. "Plus I've always been able to tell when Colby was lying. Even if I am the only one."

"Fair point," Colby laughed.

"Hey, no, wait, hang on, I am not done yelling at Colby for not telling me about the whole torture thing!" Mia growled at Colby and Amanda looked around at him confused.

"I didn't tell her about the torture on the Chinese freighter. I kind of left it out of the story when I told her about what happened," Colby said somewhat repentantly and Amanda tilted her head to the side slightly.

"Oh. Well, all things considered, I probably would have left that part out, too," Amanda said with a small, unrepentant shrug.

"Oh, yeah, sure, don't tell me that one of my oldest friends was once again tortured. Why bother, its not like it's important or anything," Mia said sarcastically.

"Look, Mia, I was fine, it was done and over with. I didn't want to make you worry; it was bad enough without you freaking out about it," Colby explained and Mia deflated slightly.

"Okay, I get that you didn't want to talk about it, but still…"

"It wasn't just that I didn't want to talk about it, it was that I know you, Mia, you would have fussed and probably wanted to come out to LA and honestly, at that point, the last thing I wanted or felt like I deserved was sympathy," Colby told her frankly and Mia narrowed her eyes at him once again.

"Colby, again I say, you were _tortured again_ and you almost died for your country again. Why the hell would you not deserve to have someone care?!" Mia asked her voice low and dangerous.

"Because I betrayed my team, made them think that I was a traitor and I had put them through hell," Colby said quietly and Megan leaned down and wrapped her arms around Colby's neck from behind once again.

"You know, we all understood why you did what you did. And what we went through when we thought you were a traitor was nothing compared to when… when we had to watch the tape of what happened on that freighter," Megan told him, biting her lip slightly to keep her emotions at bay.

"Seriously, Colby, man, when I… when I didn't come to see you except for that one time, it wasn't because I was pissed at you. I was pissed that I didn't give you the benefit of the doubt and it almost cost you your life. Don knew something was off, I don't think that Charlie ever really lost faith and you know Megan, I don't think she ever really believed it, either," David said, smiling slightly.

"Well, in that case, thank you David," Colby smiled and David stared at him incredulously.

"Did you hear what I just said? I said that I was basically the only one who didn't have any faith in your innocence at all."

"Yep, I know. That means that my acting skills worked on _someone_, at least. I take it as a compliment to my acting abilities," Colby smirked and David rolled his eyes. He knew that his lack of confidence had hurt his partner, but that Colby was trying to dispel his guilt. "No, seriously, man, if I was you I wouldn't have believed a word that I said, either. That was kind of the point."

"Uh hunh. It still almost got you killed," David said, unable to let his culpability in the matter go and Colby wondered briefly why the hell they were having this conversation now, of all times. It wasn't really the kind of conversation you had in a room full of people as an audience.

"And then you saved my life. Do I look like I hold a grudge about this?" Colby said and didn't even bother to wait for a response before continuing. "No, I don't, so seriously man, please let it go," Colby almost begged and David nodded reluctantly, but Colby knew that he wouldn't let it go that easily, but he couldn't worry about that at the moment. He had more pressing matters to think about, such as why his file was the one removed and how it tied into everything else that was going on.

"Okay, moving on from everyone's suppressed feelings about events that took place several months ago, does anyone have any idea why our crazy murderer would take Colby's file? Or why Sacks was following the three stooges?" Amanda said, somewhat irritably and David and Don looked offended at the three stooges comment while Colby just snorted in amusement.

"Maybe Sacks is our killer and Colby is his next target. I wish him luck with that one. Killing Colby is like killing the Incredible Hulk or something. Many have tried and many have died," Mia quipped and several people snickered slightly at the last comment, acknowledging the truth of the statement.

"Well, if Colby is this guy's next target I want someone with him at all times. Preferably more than one. David, stick with him no matter what. I'm guessing that Agent Granger- not you, Colby, your wife- is also going to be sticking with him most of the time, but David, seriously, I want you with him at all times unless I tell you otherwise and either Megan or I are with him. Or this psycho is caught," Don said and David nodded sharply.

"Don, come on, I am more than capable of taking care of myself!" Colby protested and Megan whacked him on the top of his head.

"Don't be a moron, this guy has killed a bunch of Black Ops guys, you can't be too careful. I'd really rather not have to visit you in the hospital again anytime soon. Or go to your funeral for that matter. So shut up and let your friends take care of you, Colby!" Megan told him firmly and Colby gave her a quick, sharp salute.

"Yes, Ma'am," he said obediently and Megan gave a small, triumphant smile.

"Okay, we'll try to keep you in NCIS as much as possible, just because it's definitely safer in here than back at the hotel," Don said, now in full on boss mode.

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Even if this psycho somehow manages to get in here, there are so many trained guns in here that he probably won't ever have a chance," David agreed.

"Okay, now, do we have any prints from the car or the files?" Don asked the two agents who were still going through the folders.

Mia looked up at him and nodded. "Yeah, we got a bunch, but I was about to send them over to the Hoover building when Megan found out that the SUV was one of ours, so I held them. I didn't want to risk it getting screwed up, what with the potential conflict of interest and all, so I don't know what we're going to do with them now."

"Hey, Amita, the NCIS forensic scientist, Abby, I think, she took a liking to you, didn't she?" Colby asked and Amita looked up at him, surprised, because none of the non agents present had really been included in the conversation up until this point.

"Um, we got along pretty good, yeah. Why do you ask?"

"NCIS doesn't have any loyalty to Sacks, Abby likes Amita and NCIS wanted in on the investigation, so we can ask Abby to run the prints through AFIS and see what comes up. Come on, David and I'll go with you, since we have to maintain chain of custody and we can't really hand them over to you," Colby said, standing up. Amita and David also stood up and Mia and Jake pulled out all of the fingerprint cards that they had collected in two evidence bags and held them out for David and Colby, who took them and quickly signed the chain of custody charts on the bags before walking out of the room with Amita in search of the NCIS forensics lab and Abby.

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	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Big Thanks to my amazing beta, VanishingP2000. I own zip, zero, zilch other than my OCs.

Please let me know what you guys think about this story, whether you like, think it could be better or whatever. However, please keep all criticism _constructive_. The review that I got from 'Joe', who was too wimpy to either use a screenname or list his email so that I could respond to the review, was not even in the realm of constructive. Simply saying that he hated everything without saying why doesn't do anyone any good because if you don't point to anything specific, I can't do anything to fix it. Also, and this is aimed at 'Joe', leave my beta the hell out of this stuff. My beta does an amazing job and I am so thankful that she takes time out of her very hectic life to look over my work, check my spelling and grammar and make helpful suggestions. She does it all for free and she does an amazing job. I do, on occasion, and particularly with this story, go through after she has already checked it over and make some changes, so there may be some mistakes through no fault of hers. So if you want to insult every part of my story without giving a reason for why you think it is crappy, feel free, through I'd rather you did it in a respectful way and gave suggestions, not just tell me you think it sucks, however, please leave my beta alone. It is not my beta's job to write the story, it is mine. She checks for spelling, grammar, plot line problems and awkward sentences and such. She works with the mechanical elements of my writing, the story line is mine, so don't insult her because you think that she should have changed my writing style, plot line, characters, ect, because that is not what a beta does. Thank you to everyone who has left positive and constructive reviews pointing out things that you disliked in a respectful and mature manor, which is what reviews are all about. I love it when someone leaves a review telling me that there was something about the story that they didn't particularly like and telling me how I could improve it. Constructive criticism is good for the soul. Emphasis on _constructive_.

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Chapter 20

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When the elevator arrived on the floor where the forensics lab was located the three were almost blasted back through the elevator by a cacophony of noise from said lab. Colby gave his head a small shake and headed into the lab like a man on a mission and David and Amita followed after him, wincing as the doors opened and the music became even louder. Colby walked over to the young raven haired woman who had been introduced as Abby and tapped her lightly on the shoulder, causing her to jump slightly. When she saw who it was that had invaded her domain she scowled slightly but then noticed that Amita was trailing a little behind him, a lightly pained expression on her face because of the volume of the heavy metal music that she had playing.

The Goth literally bounced over to the CD player and turned the music off, causing all three to sigh in relief, thankful for the end of the assault on their eardrums.

"Amita! Hey, what's up?" Abby said, pointedly ignoring both Colby and David.

"Hey Abby, the FBI has got some latent fingerprints… well, actually a lot of latent prints from the crime scene and well, we were wondering if you could run them for us. Please?" Amita asked her and Abby quirked her head to the side in confusion.

"Why can't the FBI run the prints themselves? They did create AFIS, after all."

"Because, on our way back here from the crime scene an SUV was tailing us- poorly, I might add, which resulted in a Dukes of Hazzard like car chase on the beltway until a cop pulled us over, but that's not the point. The point is that Megan ran the SUV's plates and it was one of ours. It was an FBI agent's SUV. Special Agent Ron Sacks. So we don't want to send it over to Hoover for obvious reasons and we figured that there's no love lost between you guys and Agent Sacks, so there's no way that you're going to cover for him," Colby explained and Abby's eyes got wide and she seemed to forget that she disliked him.

"Really?! I always knew that the guy was a bastard, but a serial killer? Wow." Abby said in awe and plucked the evidence bags out of David and Colby's hands eagerly and quickly scrawled her name on the evidence log. "Okay, I'll run these prints right away and I'll be discreet about it, not a word to anyone. Unless Gibbs comes down here and specifically asks me, cuz I totally can not lie to him. Or Tony, cause I can't lie to him either. Same goes for Ziva. But if they send McGee down to ask, I can totally lie to him. No problem. And even if Ducky ask me, he'd go way into a story before I could answer even if I wanted to, so that's not a problem either. And I'm still pissed at the director for the whole dress code enforcement and Chip the psycho assistant fiasco, so I would be more than happy to lie to her," Abby rambled and David raised his eyebrow slightly at Colby.

"Right…thanks. You don't mind if we hang around down here, do you? Just because I am way too scared to go back near a pissed off Mia and a mildly freaking out Megan, along with everyone freaking out about the torture and thinking that this guy is coming after me next thing. I can only deal with one crisis at a time and that is four crises at once," Colby said shaking his head in slight horror.

"Um, I have no idea what half of that was actually about, but sure. I'm still trying to figure out why Gibbs hates you so much, Agent Granger. You kind of remind me of Tony, except hotter. And deeper, which is surprising, cause Tony has a lot of layers," Abby said and Colby smiled at her as she talked faster than anyone else he'd ever heard and started to copy each of the prints into the system.

"Well, why he doesn't like me is simple. I told him to stick it and I beat him in a jurisdictional pissing match. I think the fact that his evil eye doesn't intimidate me at all pisses him off," Colby said and Abby laughed.

"Yeah, that's probably it. SO there stare really doesn't scare you at all?" Abby asked excitedly as she worked away with the latent prints.

"Nope. There comes a point where looks are no longer frightening," Colby said in a very matter of fact tone and David snorted lightly.

"At what point would that be?"

"Uh, probably right around the time that Lancer gave me my second go around with BZ," Colby said as though they were discussing when they realized that the Miami Dolphins were not going to be having a very good season this year.

"Wait; did you just say BZ, as in Quinuclidinyl benzilate? That is some seriously nasty stuff! And you've had two go rounds with it? Yeesh, I can see why the Gibbs' stare had absolutely no effect on you," Abby said, pausing in her work with the fingerprints to look up at Colby.

"Yeah. Exactly," David said with raised eyebrows.

"Okay. You California people are definitely interesting. I think I have finally found a team weirder than ours here at NCIS." Abby said as she went back to work. "Hey, so why did Gibbs think that Agent Granger was a traitor earlier, anyway?"

"First, you can call me Colby, it's only Agent Granger to people who piss me off," he said smiling before adding under his breath. "Like Special Agent Gibbs, for example." This caused both Abby and David to smirk. "And second, I guess that when Agent Gibbs Googled my name, whatever popped up wasn't exactly positive," Colby said simply and Abby spun around her chair to face her computer and opened an internet explorer window to the Google homepage and typed in Colby's name. The first several articles that popped up were about cheese and then she got to one with that was actually about Colby and Abby clicked on it and read began reading the article.

_**Chinese Mole found in the FBI**_

_Los Angeles, CA- __The FBI released a statement late Sunday evening that Special Agent Colby Granger of the FBI's Los Angeles field office has been arrested on charges of espionage. According to the FBI spokesperson, Agent Granger's name was discovered on a list of several traitors, including former FBI Counterintelligence Agent Dwayne Carter, who served with Special Agent Granger in the Army in Afghanistan and who was also discovered as a traitor several months ago. This list, which according to an insider source is the infamous espionage legend known The Janus List, named for the two faced Roman god Janus and is rumored to be a list of double agents and moles. _

_The FBI refused to comment on other names that may have been on the list or even __if there were the names of any other operatives in US Law Enforcement. The list was discovered during the FBI investigation into the death of Taylor Ashby, a former MI5 operative. The exact detail of the case and discovery of the Janus List are not yet clear and the FBI has refused to comment further on the situation. Special Agent Granger and Carter are both currently being held at the Northcom Regional Confinement Facility._

"Oh, wow, I can see why Gibbs might have drawn the wrong conclusion, but honestly, I know he thinks that FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Idiots, but I mean really. Like you would still be with the FBI if there was even the slightest possibility that you were a spy. Seriously," Abby shook her head. Sometimes Gibbs surprised even her.

"That's what I said," David told her and Colby shot him a look and David threw up his hands in mock surrender. "Fine, that's what I shouted and snarled at him," David conceded and Abby laughed.

"So, basically, Gibbs dissed your friend and you defended your friend's honor. That's sweet. But you are so lucky that you didn't actually get into a fight with Gibbs: he's a former Marine."

"David would have been fine. I'd have kicked Gibbs' ass if he'd managed to land a hit. But it wasn't like I was gonna let David get past me and at Gibbs. I just wasn't in the mood for a bar room brawl or the paperwork that would inevitably result from the bar room brawl," Colby said and everyone laughed.

"Okay, I've got all the prints in the computer and I'm starting to run them now. It shouldn't be too long, it would be faster if I could just compare the prints to Sacks to start with, but that would definitely tip off the FBI. Right now I've got it running on a secure loop sort of thing that McGee and I set up a while back so that the FBI couldn't see what we were doing. We only let that happen once before we wrote a program to prevent it." Abby smirked, clearly proud of herself for having outsmarted the FBI techs.

"You know, normally I would probably have a problem with the fact that you have the ability to shut the FBI out of our own database, but today it is a very good thing. Hell, I'm just impressed that you managed that. Actually, I'm more impressed that Agent McGee helped you," Colby said and Abby rewarded him with a bright, happy smile.

"Thanks. And McGee is the real computer expert around here. He has a Masters in Computing Forensics from MIT."

Amita looked impressed. "So he's an MIT guy, hunh? Tradition states that I really should hate him. The whole cannon thing, you know how it is," Amita said and Colby and David looked slightly confused.

"No, not really. I went to Louisiana State University for undergrad and Georgia State University for grad. We usually just kidnapped the other team's mascot and let the military paraphernalia be."

"Oh, what did you major in?" Amita asked in interest, always eager to talk academics.

"I did a triple major in sociology, psychology and criminology at Louisiana State and a double major in criminology and forensic science from Georgia State," Abby told her just as the computer beeped happily. "Oh, we've got a match on a couple of the prints," she said as she pulled the files up.

"Who do they belong to?" Colby asked, somewhat impatiently.

"ATF Special Agent Robert Howe," she said and Colby, David and Amita all sighed. "What?" she asked, confused by their less than happy reactions.

"That's out dead guy, it was his SUV. That tells us zip," Colby told her and she nodded.

"Well, that was only about a third of the prints that you lifted from the car, the rest are still running through AFIS," she assured him quickly and Colby nodded. The group lapsed into silence as they waited for another hit from AFIS. They all started at the sound of the lab door whooshing open and turned to see who had joined them. Much to Colby and David's displeasure and Abby's amusement it was Gibbs carrying a giant bright red and white soft drink cup.

"Hey Abs, care to tell me what's going on down here?" he asked as he walked over to Abby and handed her the Caff-Pow!, pointedly ignoring both Colby and David as he passed them and only giving Amita a slight nod by way of greeting.

"Well, see, I'm running some prints from the crime scene through AFIS for the nice FBI agents," Abby explained as though it were the most obvious thing ever.

"And why can't they run them through their own system themselves?" Gibbs inquired, eyes narrowing slightly.

"I'll take this one," Colby said and Gibbs slowly turned to glare expectantly at him. Colby was once again completely unaffected by the patented Gibbs stare. "Well, on our way back here we were being tailed in the most obvious and crappy manor ever and when we ran the plates of the SUV that was following us it came back as being one of ours. FBI Special Agent Ron Sacks. We didn't want to send them to the Hoover building for fairly obvious reasons, so we asked Abby to run them for us so that the results would be unbiased and we'd get some actual answers," Colby said, giving Gibbs almost the exact some speech that he had given to Abby just a little while ago.

"Uh hunh. So basically what you're telling me is that you can't trust your own damn agency," Gibbs said smugly and Colby just gave him a small shrug in reply.

"Yeah, well, that's starting to sound way too familiar," Colby muttered under his breath before continuing at normal volume. "What we're actually saying is that we don't want to risk losing this guy on a technicality. It's just better to be safe than sorry. Plus I'm paranoid about bureaucrats and their loyalties and agendas."

"Well with good reason, if you think about some recent events," David added.

"Yeah. And for all we know, this could be coming from higher ups," Colby added with an air of foreboding.

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	21. Chapter 21

Big thanks to my wonderful beta, VanishingP200. Also, I don't own NUMB3RS or NCIS.

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Chapter 21

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"So, tell me, do you guys have any idea what is even going on with this case?" Gibbs asked just a little smugly.

"Vaguely. But it is kind of hard to catch someone who is killing Black Ops agents and consultants," Colby pointed out.

"Why?" Gibbs asked simply.

"Well, because they're smart enough to get the drop on these guys. And these aren't your average Black Ops operatives; they're the Special Ops of Black Ops. They are super elite and the best of the best," Colby explained and Gibbs studied him for a moment as he took another sip of his coffee.

"I though this stuff was all classified."

"The actual information is, I'm just giving you a general picture without specifics. But I'm considering reading some of your team in on this, given some of the recent developments," Colby explained.

"Some of my team?" Gibbs repeated suspiciously.

"Yes. You, Agent DiNozzo, Ziva and Abby," Colby said.

"Why not Agent McGee or my ME?" Gibbs asked and Colby gave him an 'are you seriously asking me that' look and sighed.

"Agent McGee seems like he would fold like a lawn chair under anything more than a casual interview, if not that as well and to be perfectly honest; Dr. Mallard does not seem to be able to resist talking about everything and anything. Not to mention I doubt that he could hold up under much interrogation, either. And it doesn't seem necessary to involve him at this point. I don't think I really even need to comment on his assistant," Colby said and both Abby and Gibbs had to concede that he had a very fair point. Particularly about McGee folding like a lawn chair.

"And Director Shepherd?" Gibbs asked, more curious than anything else, not really caring if Jenny was kept in the loop or not.

"That depends on what Amanda says about her. Apparently they're friends," Colby said, shaking his head slightly and shrugging, his hands shoved deep into his front pockets.

"Okay. Sure. When exactly would you be reading us in on this?" Gibbs asked, apparently deciding to try playing nice with others for a change.

"Uh, later this afternoon sometime. I don't really know, I just decided on this about two minutes ago," Colby said with a slight laugh. Before Gibbs could formulate a response to this, Abby's computer beeped again, signaling that they had another print match. Everyone except for Amita who hung back slightly gathered around the computer as Abby pulled the results up.

"Oh yeah. Here we go. Sacks' prints are all over the place. There are a bunch from both the door handles from the left side and the trunk as well as all over the files and a few other places. His prints are about a third of them, too," Abby told them consulting the list of locations attached to the print numbers.

"Okay, that is great. Well, not great that apparently an FBI agent is going on a Black Ops killing spree, but great that we've got a lead and some evidence. This puts him not only at the murder scene, but also trailing us like a drunken sailor on speed," Colby said and David nodded. "But we're still going to have to wait on the rest of the prints and check them out."

"Yeah, it shouldn't be too much longer," Abby assured him.

"Hey, were there any other prints besides Howe's and Sacks' on the files. Particularly the one labeled _The Janus List_?" Colby asked and Abby nodded and grabbed the list of what prints came from where although she looked confused.

"Um, no, Howe and Sacks are the only ones who left prints on _The Janus List_ Folder, but there are a few others on some of the other files. Why are you so interested in this file?" she asked after checking the numbers of the prints that had come up to the ones found on the files.

"Because that's the only one with anything missing so far. And the file that's missing is mine," Colby told her grimly.

"Oh, god, you guys don't think that this psycho is coming after Colby next, do you?" she asked David, horrified.

"We don't know, but it's a distinct possibility, which is why we're making sure that someone's with him at all times. And I get to be his primary babysitter," David said smirking and Colby shot him a glare, which just made David's smirk widen.

"Whatever, man. I don't know, I don't think that Sacks could pull this off himself, I mean, that was the most obvious tail in the history of the planet earth. There is no way that he'd manage to pull it over on a bunch of seasoned Black Ops operatives. The paper pushers and math geek, maybe and the ATF agent, a slimmer maybe, hell, I could maybe even possibly see him getting luck and getting one of the Black Ops agents, but not three of them, especially when they would have been on extra high alert because of the other murders. No way," Colby said shaking his head.

"Yeah, I agree. The guy is a complete moron. Even by the FBI's standards," Gibbs said and both Colby and David glared at him.

"I don't know who they have you work with from the FBI, but I hate to burst your bubble, most of them are pretty smart. At least, all the ones I work with," Amita jumped in to defend her friends and Abby beamed at her.

"Well, most of the ones they send to work with me are dumber than the average high school drop out," Gibbs shrugged, taking another gulp of his coffee.

"Well yeah, they're the ones that were too dumb to get out of having to work with you so they're obviously the dumbest of the bunch," Colby retorted and Abby laughed and high fived him while Gibbs considered the statement.

"You know, that might actually be it. Hunh," Gibbs said thoughtfully as the computer beeped once again.

"Okay, here we go, a couple more matched to Martin Smith. He works in the ATF file room. His prints were on a couple of files. Which is exactly where they belong," Abby told them and the computer beeped again. "We got a hit on the rest of the prints. They all matched prints also found at a murder in Philadelphia 10 years ago. Oh, Gibbs! Check out who the lead detective on the case was!" Abby said excitedly.

"DiNozzo," Gibbs said without even glancing at the screen.

"Yup!" Abby bounced over to where her Caff-Pow was sitting and took a long slurp of the highly caffeinated beverage. Gibbs pulled out his cell phone and pressed speed dial number one.

"Abby's lab. Now. Just you, DiNozzo," Gibbs said tersely, not allowing Tony to get a single word in and hanging up before he had any chance to respond. "Let's see what Tony remembers about this case."

"Okay, then," David said, raising his eyebrows slightly at Gibbs complete lack of phone etiquette. Tony entered the lab about a minute later, looking around curiously.

"Hey, Boss. What's up?"

"What do you remember about this case, Tony?" Gibbs asked without preamble, gesturing to the plasma that was displaying Abby's computer screen. Tony walked around Abby's desk and skimmed the case summary.

"I can tell you that we never had any chance of solving it. We never got much info on the vic; he didn't seem to exist in any database. There were no distinguishing marks and his prints came up with nada. We got a couple of prints from the scene that didn't belong to him, but we didn't get anything from them either. We never had a single lead. Why do ask, Boss?" Tony asked his curiosity and confusion increasing by the second.

"We got a match to the prints found at that scene from the ATF agent's car," Gibbs told him and Tony looked at him in shock. "Yeah, exactly. It gets better. Seems like whoever killed this guy back then is working with- wait for this one- Agent Sacks. Yes, that Agent Sacks," Tony just stared at him blankly.

"You're kidding, right? You can't possibility be serious about this," Tony said, completely stunned.

"Tony, do you think that it is even remotely possible for me to have made something this ridiculous up?"

"Well, while you are very creative, Boss, there is no way that you could make this one up. It's just way too weird," Tony admitted.

"Yeah, exactly. We don't want to spook Sacks and his accomplice, so we can't bring him in yet, because we don't really have enough to hold him, especially given that he's a federal agent. That tends to win him the benefit of the doubt."

"Yeah, Sacks clearly isn't the brains of the operation and this guy obviously isn't law enforcement, since the prints aren't in the system," Tony said, taking every opportunity to make a dig at Sacks' intelligence.

"Ah, not necessarily. If he was Black Ops his prints wouldn't be in the system. In the Black Ops world we go out of our way to make ourselves invisible. So our killer could be Black Ops. I'll talk to Ams and see if she can get someone run the prints against the Black Ops databases. We like to be invisible, but we also like to be able to identify dead agents. The other thing is that they could be a foreign operative or a terrorist or something. But somebody has to know something about this psycho. There's a learning curve on this kind of crazy and this psycho hasn't screwed up yet, so he's got to have some kind of experience," Colby said thoughtfully and both Abby and Gibbs just stared at him while David nodded, already used to Colby's creepily extensive knowledge of the spy craft.

"Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, hopefully we'll come up with something. I really want to be back in LA for Christmas. I do not like White Christmases; if I had I would have stayed in New York City," David said, glaring out the snow that was covering up most of the lab's sidewalk level windows.

"You get used to it," Abby said and Colby shuddered slightly.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm afraid of," he muttered, causing the others to laugh.

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	22. Chapter 22

Big Thanks to my awesome beta, VanishingP2000. I own nothing of NUMB3RS or NCIS, but my army of OCs are mine.

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Chapter 22

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"Okay, so Amanda said that the Mockingbird Director okayed her to scan the latent prints that we got from Special Agent Howe's SUV and from the Philadelphia crime scene from 10 years ago. She's checking it against all United States Black Ops operatives first and then against known terrorists and foreign operatives and then against unidentified ones from other crime scenes. Here's hoping we get something," Colby said as he collapsed back into his chair in the conference room a few hours later.

The conference room was now much more crammed then it had been earlier what with the FBI team and the addition ATF Special agents Jared Vaughn and Mia Evans, Sarah and Jake Rodriguez, NCIS Special Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo, Officer David, Abby and Charlie and Amita. Larry had once again been banished to autopsy to hang out with Ducky because he had absolutely no sense of discretion and he had been wearing on everyone's already very thin nerves with his vague and confusing metaphors. Amanda was back at Mockingbird headquarters working on the prints and other odd jobs.

"Right, okay, that's good," Abby said, swinging her platform buckled boot clad feet onto the edge of the table and reclining in the chair. She had McGee occupied fixing an incredibly complex problem that she had on her computer that would take him several days to fix. One that she had created earlier by allowing Gibbs and Colby to go crazy and do everything and anything that they could think of to it.

Gibbs had, surprisingly done significantly less damage than Colby had. Colby seemed to know just enough about computers to cause a whole hell of a lot of trouble with one. He had wreaked havoc on her computer, but she had made sure that there was nothing important on there to destroy first. It had been rather impressive, the way that he had methodically gone through her hard drive and competently obliterated it. If it had been any other situation and he had done any one of the many, many things he had done to her computer she probably would have murdered him. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Gibbs simply used the computer as he normally would, which inflicted no small amount of damage. It just didn't do anywhere near as much as Colby's methodical assault on technology had managed.

"So, what, now we just wait?" Ziva asked, clearly not finding this option very appealing. Colby looked over at her thoughtfully.

"Hey, Ziv, Mossad has a crap load of prints on record from your operatives, foreign operatives, terrorists, basically the same as us, except with different prints. Can you pull a favor or two and get someone to run the prints that we have through their databases, too?" Colby asked and Ziva gave him one of her small, mysterious smiles.

"Sure," she said, getting up and walking out of the room, swiping a copy of the file with the prints in it on her way out.

"Thanks!" Colby called after her and she just held her hand up briefly in response as the door closed behind her.

"Okay, then. I think that's all we're going to get. I could call one of my Chinese contacts, but I don't think that they'd be too overly eager to help me out anymore," Colby smirked somewhat evilly.

"Gee, do you think, Granger?" Megan asked him sarcastically. "I don't know why on earth that might be."

"And on that note, I think its time to order dinner," Don said, looking at Megan warily.

"That's probably a good idea. Locals, any suggestions?" Colby said, addressing the agents from DC.

"Yeah, there's a Chinese place and a pizza place just down the street that we get food from all the time. They even give us our very own law enforcement discount," Tony said, wiggling his eyebrows.

"I don't think any of us are in the mood for Chinese, are we Colby?" Don sniped lightly and Colby rolled his eyes.

"No, Don, we're not. But Pizza does sound good," Colby said, ignoring the none too subtle dig at his undercover assignment.

"Yeah, I'm with Granger on this one," Megan said.

"Sounds good to me!" Charlie piped in and Amita nodded in agreement. There followed a long, heated debate about toppings and the pros and cons of New York style versus Chicago style pizza with Megan and David being the staunchest supporters of New York, with Colby and Don backing them, though far less passionately so and Mia and Jared squarely on the side of Chicago because they had been stationed in Chicago for several years and thin versus stuffed crust and many other pizza variables. In the end they decided on six different types of pizza to order, coming to the conclusion that midnight snacks were always a plus in this situation. Ziva had shuddered at the thought of the grease logged pizza and announced that she was going out for some real food.

The rest of the group continued to skim through the various files from Howe's trunk, Sack's file and the life histories of the other victims, trying to find some kind of link. Charlie and Amita were scrawling away on several whiteboards that the NCIS agents had brought in for them while Abby watched them in fascination.

"Okay, I'm going for the pizza!" Tony announced twenty minutes later, getting up. Gibbs also stood up and Tony looked at him in confusion. "Boss?"

"Tony, if Sacks is involved in this and we all know how much he hates you, I'd rather he didn't decide to take you out, since you're technically involved in this now, too," Gibbs said and Tony shot him a 'you have got to be kidding me' look, but Gibbs just narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Sure, fine, whatever, Boss. It's not like I'm going to win this argument anyway," Tony sighed in defeat.

"Good call, DiNozzo," Gibbs said as he grabbed his coat and swung it around his shoulders and walked out of the conference room, DiNozzo quickly grabbed his coat as well and hurried out after Gibbs.

"Aw, I love it when Gibbs goes all papa bear on Tony. Not that he doesn't have damn good reason," Abby said once the door closed and the rest of the group looked at her in confusion.

"Why would he have good reason? Agent DiNozzo seems like a perfectly capable federal agent," David asked the question that everyone else had been thinking.

"Well, he is. He's a damn good agent, one of our best agents, right behind Gibbs. But, you see, Tony has a really long bad luck streak. Some of his finer accomplishments include catching the pneumonic plague, getting chained to a serial killer, being framed for murder, getting the crap beaten out of him by an assassin that thought that he was also an assassin, being drugged and kidnapped by a crazy cowboy cocktail waitress and locked in a sewer with a bunch of dead, decaying bodies, lots of getting whacked over the head and several times almost getting blown up. And that's just a quick overview. I didn't even get to the time where he almost froze to death in a cargo box and wound up getting shot. And yet he's still standing. It's insane," Abby said.

"Wow, Colby, he sounds like you lately. Just can't manage to keep himself out of trouble," Megan said and Colby threw her a sarcastic smile, but Colby showed no sign that he could hear the continued digs at his recent attraction to danger and simply continued to read the file.

"Aw, come on, Megan. Leave him be, I think he has enough to worry about already," David said, jumping to his friend's defense.

"Nah, man, its okay. If mocking me makes them feel better about all this, I say go for it. Somebody might as well have some fun," Colby shrugged, closing the file and dropping it onto the table and pulling another one towards him at random, flipping it open and beginning to read once again.

"No, David's right. Sorry, Colby. It's just that, you know, you give us so much to work with. We mock you because we love you Granger," Megan said, ruffling his hair affectionately.

"I know, Megan. That's why I let you. You don't think that I couldn't get you to stop if I wanted to. By, say, I don't know, just asking, maybe? Trust me, Meg, I was Black Ops and I was in the Army, I can take a lot of hazing and ribbing," Colby smiled reassuringly at her.

"I don't want to know about Black Ops hazing. I really just don't man," David said, shuddering slightly at the thought.

"Good call my friend," Colby said nodding wisely at him as he idly flipped a page in the file. An awkward silence descended on the room for several minutes after this, some just not really wanting to comment further on the subject, some imagining what exactly Black Ops hazing might entail and others remembering fond and not so fond memories from Black Ops hazing.

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	23. Chapter 23

Huge thanks to my amazing beta, VanishingP2000. I don't own the NCIS and NUMB3RS guys (or girls).

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Chapter 23

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"Wow, who died here?" Tony asked as he and Gibbs entered the room with pizza in hand, followed by Ziva, who was carrying a paper bag with Hebrew writing on it.

"No one died; we were just pondering the concept of Black Ops hazing rituals. Actually, now that I really think about it, maybe someone did die," Megan told him absently, still staring off into space with a vaguely disturbed look on her face.

"Hey, we are _way_ too good at what we do to let anyone die during our fun and games. We know exactly when to stop to keep our subjects from dying," Mia said, tossing another folder into the box of files that they had already gone through and pulling another one out of the box of files that they still needed to read.

"And that's incredibly disturbing," Tony said, shuddering slightly and turning his attention to the pizza boxes on the table.

"Man, and you thought you had hard core hazing rituals in the Maine Corps, hunh, bossman?" Abby said happily, getting up and bouncing towards Tony and the pizza.

"We don't do hazing in the Marine Corps," Gibbs said simply and Tony and Abby raised their eyebrows at each other behind his back. "We test the physical and mental limits of new recruits to see if they can handle being a Marine," Gibbs added and Abby and Tony mouthed '_Hazing_' at each other with matching knowing smirks.

"Well, that's what we do at NCIS, too. But we just call it tormenting the probies here," Abby grinned, grabbing a piece of the everything pizza.

"Yes, yes we do. Good times," Tony agreed as he grabbed a piece of his favorite pizza, pepperoni, sausage and extra cheese.

"Yes, but not for McGee, I imagine," Ziva laughed evilly.

"It sure was when it was him tormenting our dear Agent Lee," Tony shot back and she gave a slight side tip, conceding the point to him. "You See that? Everyone who sticks around long enough to not be the bottom of the food chain anymore changes their tune about torturing rookies."

"Yeah, no, I don't think we ever really did any hazing or tormenting to Colby, mostly cuz we figured that anything we did wouldn't affect him after being in the Army. And since we now know about the existence of Black Ops hazing, I'd say we were right to not even bother trying," Megan said, thoughtfully.

"Ah, but what about that time that Edgerton made Colby go dumpster diving?" David pointed out.

"That wasn't hazing. That was him not wanting to go dumpster diving and using his seniority to get out of it. And honestly, I have no problem with dumpster diving. I actually find it kind of amusing," Colby told them, grinning.

"How the hell can you find jumping into someone else's trash entertaining?" Don asked incredulously.

"No, it's true. He would always volunteer whenever we had to dumpster dive. He never did seem to mind being waist deep in someone else's crap. Plus he said that it was a great thing to bring up when someone had to do something really unpleasant, gave him leverage to get out of doing it," Mia smirked, still not looking up from the file she was engrossed in.

"Okay, seriously, how do you do that? The whole focusing on the file completely but never missing any of the conversation?" Don asked, shaking his head.

"It's a spy thing. We're trained to multitask," she explained simply. "Thanks," she said as Colby handed her a piece of plain cheese pizza.

"Okay, moving on from the weird ass traditions, customs and acquired skills of the spy world, can we get back to the actual case, maybe?" Gibbs asked, somewhat irritably.

"Uh, Boss, you do know that the whole case is centered around spies, right?" Tony pointed out, earning himself a smack on the back of the head from Gibbs.

"Shut up and eat your pizza, DiNozzo," he said gruffly, sending a mock glare at Abby as she bounced over to him and plucked the piece of pizza that he had just lifted off his plate from his hand and took a large bite and bouncing happily back to what had been designated as the geek corner. Gibbs grabbed another piece of pizza and took a bite quickly.

"Okay, back to the case. I'm thinking that these attacks can't be random. I mean, come on, let's see what this guy has accomplished so far. He got the FBI on the case, more specifically our team and then he got NCIS and ATF involved and our team out to Washington. But why?" Megan said.

"Maybe Sacks' accomplice is still in LA. I mean, the victims from out here were no where near as difficult to murder while the ones in LA were all high stakes, hard to get one over on. I'm thinking that our killers wanted to get us out of LA and to DC. But the question is still why?" David agreed.

"I think he wants Colby," Don said suddenly and everyone looked around at him, surprised.

"And you came to this conclusion…how?" Colby asked.

"Because, it seems like everything ties to you and this gets you out of… damn it. What's the name of your contact that we were going to meet?"

"I told you that I can't-" Colby began but Don stopped him with a sharp wave of his hand.

"Look, I think that he's our second killer. Either that or he's going to be- or already has been- these guys next victim. But I'm personally leaning towards the first option," Don said and Colby looked at him, understanding dawning on his face.

"Shit. Her name is Allison Mortensen. She's a deputy director of the CIA. Officially, she's the deputy director in charge of CIA operations out of the Langley field office. Unofficially, she's the Black Ops guru. She was one of the best Black Ops Agents in recent history; she'd be perfectly capable of killing all those agents. Damn it, I should have seen this one coming!" Colby growled, slamming his palm onto the table hard in frustration.

"Alright, find out what you can about this Allison Mortensen; see if she's been in LA recently," Don said and Colby, Mia and Jared snorted. "What?"

"You don't honestly think that we're going to be able to find any record of her being in LA if she committed these murders. Because if she doesn't want to leave a trail, she won't. Trust me; it's another spy thing, a skill that we all learn damn fast," Colby assured him with a small, tight smile.

"I am learning so much more about the espionage craft than I ever wanted to know over the past few days," David said, shaking his head as he grabbed a second piece of pizza from one of the boxes.

"Hey, you could just not listen, you know," Colby told him matter-of-factly and David just rolled his eyes.

"Whatever, we should still check on Mortensen, see if we can maybe catch something about where's she's been lately. I'm thinking that she probably would have had to file some sort of itinerary with the CIA for that length of time and she wouldn't want to make anyone suspicious," David said rationally.

"Good thought, but see, the thing is that she's unofficially in charge of Black Ops, they probably have no idea where she is during 90 of her time away from Langley, it gives the higher ups plausible deniability," Colby told him frowning.

"I am really starting to hate all this Black Ops, cloak and dagger crap," David muttered resentfully.

"You and me both," Colby agreed, patting him on the back consolingly.

"Well, on the bright side, I didn't have to live it for years. You must hate it a whole hell of a lot more than I do."

"Oh yeah," Colby said emphatically with his mouth full of pizza and Megan sent him a disgusted look.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to talk with your mouth full, Granger?"

"Nope, that's just not the way we roll in Idaho, Meg," Colby grinned at the irritated eye roll that Megan sent his way. "See, when you're eating your lunch next to the pig pen, pretty much everything seems incredibly civilized," Megan, Charlie, Amita and Don all wrinkled their noses in disgust at the idea of eating next to a pig pen, causing the others, except for Gibbs who only looked slightly amused by the proceedings, to laugh heartily.

"Well, that sure does explain a lot about you, Colby," Megan shot back as soon as she had recovered from imagining eating by a bunch of pigs. Not that this was much different from when she had lunch with the guys at work, anyway. They continued to eat in relative silence, as no one particularly wanted to keep thinking about the case and all the evidence that they didn't have. But with a little luck, they'd hopefully have that evidence by morning.

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	24. Chapter 24

A/N: Big thanks my amazing beta, VanishingP200. I own neither NCIS nor NUMB3RS. Please don't sue me.

And we have reached the freshly written NCIS chapter. Chapter 23.5. But for your reading ease (trust me, this is for you guys, it's driving me nuts having to remember that now I have to open the chapter 24 file for chapter 25 and so on), I've just kinda shoved this in as chapter 24 and then just make each of the subsequent chapters one higher. It kinda gives me a headache. Anyway, sorry for the update lag, I, uh, I kinda got caught up and mumbles forgot. Sorry. Thanks to Cgfan for reminding me to update!

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Chapter 24

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Gibbs sighed, rubbing his temples absently as he stared down at the file in front of him, rereading it for what seeming like the hundredth time that night. It was well past midnight and he had sent the rest of his team home hours ago, except for Tony, but had stayed himself. The file that was open on his desk was that of FBI Special Agent Colby Granger. He wasn't sure what it was about the man, but something about him had Gibbs' hackles up. But according to the man's file, he was the absolute picture of patriotism- eight years of honorable service with the Army, first in Special Operations as part of the Army Rangers followed by three years with CID, a Purple Heart and Silver Star during his tour in Afghanistan before he was honorably discharged and joined the FBI. His FBI career was also highly distinguished; he was SWAT/HRT trained and had been awarded the FBI's Medal of Meritorious Conduct for his work undercover. The only black mark on his record was an official reprimand regarding his actions during a case involving Dwayne Carter, his Chinese contact. Gibbs was actually somewhat surprised that the reprimand had not been removed from his file after the dust had cleared- not that it mattered, no one would pay any attention to it, anyway. He was also fluent in Spanish and Farsi and spoke rudimentary Pashto.

But still, there was something about him that bothered Gibbs and he was bound and determined to figure out what it was before morning. Perhaps it was his general dislike for the FBI- especially when they took over his case and shut him out almost completely. Or maybe it was his general dislike of being in the dark. Or his absolute disdain for spies. He leaned back in his chair and pondered this latest thought for a moment, considering that his problem wasn't so much with Agent Granger, but rather with the things that his occupations tended to represent.

Or it could just be that Granger was an Army guy. Marines on a whole took offense to Army guys on general principle. Marines had several theories as to what Army might stand for, including Aren't Real Men Yet, or Aren't Ready to be Marines Yet. Many Marines found it rather offensive that most people lumped them together with the Army despite being pa branch of the DoN and therefore harbored a general, though usually good-natured, dislike for all Army guys.

Whatever it was about Granger, Gibbs knew that he would have to get over it if he and his team were to have chance of have more than an observational role in this case. But there was still something about it that he couldn't shake and he was determined to figure out what it was. It was almost 2am when he finally realized what it was- all the parts of his record that were classified. The details of his Op had, for the most part, been dropped down from that much rumored grey area above Top Secret to various levels of classifications ranging from Top Secret to Secret to Confidential to actually being declassified. But there were still a number of parts of his file which he had not been able to access because he didn't have the proper clearance.

Some of it was from Granger's time in Afghanistan, which was to be expected from someone who had been Special Forces and some of it was scattered across his FBI career- also not too terribly unusual. Details from college and from after college, but before he had joined the Army, however, was unusual.

And yet there was no indication that he had ever been in the CIA or had any real espionage experience save for his undercover operation and perhaps a few brief incidents during his tour in Afghanistan. Gibbs growled slightly in frustration as he dropped the folder back onto his desk, frustrated.

"What's up, Boss?" Gibbs fought the urge to jump at the sound of Tony's voice behind him- he had forgotten that the younger man was still there.

"Nothing," Gibbs said and Tony raised an eyebrow at him over his computer. "What have you got on that case so far?" Gibbs asked and Tony raised his other eyebrow at the abrupt subject change, but didn't comment.

"Not much. Same as before. We spent three weeks straight on that case, never got a single decent lead- hell, pretty much the only lead we ever got involved a magical squirrel being the killer. Yeah, the guy we got the tip from was a druggie that gave us weird ass tips all the time. It's as much a dead end now as it was 10 years ago, unless they manage to match those prints," he shrugged and Gibbs nodded. "Now, boss, I've shared what I've been working on, now it's your turn. What is that, Gibbs?" Tony gestured at the file that was still strewn across his desk.

"Agent Granger's file," Gibbs said simply and Tony shook his head slightly as he opened his email inbox.

"Man, Boss, you are so untrusting," Tony chuckled as he began to scroll through his email, a smirk playing on his lips as he scanned the first of over 100 previously ignored- but never deleted, just in case- interdepartmental memos.

"Maybe, but better paranoid than dead," Gibbs sighed as he finally shut the file and dropped it into a drawer.

"Oh, come on, Gibbs. He's beyond vetted and is bedazzled with medals," Tony rolled his eyes, half at Gibbs' paranoia and half at the ridiculous memo that he was scanning which outlined the proper way to staple reports. It was truly a waste of electricity to send this crap to every single person within the agency. Not to mention an incredible waste of energy to type it up and send it out. This sort of thing was exactly why he never read these stupid things.

"'Bedazzled', DiNozzo?" Gibbs said with his patented slanted smirk.

"I've been hanging around Abby too much, I suppose," Tony said as he read and promptly deleted a memo reminding all agents to clean their guns after firing. As if they needed reminding- it was rather offensive that admin thought they were too stupid to remember to clean their weapons after use.

"And you say that I abuse my computer," Gibbs noted dryly, referring to the force and irritation with which Tony had deleted the message.

"I hate those stupid admin weenies and their stupid ass pointless memos," Tony grumbled as he began scanning the next one, which revolved around the improper use of office supplies- specifically mentioned were rubber bands and paperclips, so it was likely directed at himself and Ziva. He smirked and saved this one, forwarding it to Ziva because he knew that usually she simply deleted all interdepartmental memos immediately without opening them.

"You have been hanging out with Abby too much," Gibbs agreed lightly and Tony grinned.

"Yep," Tony agreed, deleting several more useless memos and pausing. "So, what are you gonna do, Boss?"

"About what, DiNozzo?"

"Agent Granger."

"I don't know," Gibbs admitted with a heavy sigh. He wasn't used to not having all the answers. Tony stood up and crossed the distance between their desks so that he was now standing in front of Gibbs' desk.

"Can I be honest with you, Boss?" Tony asked and Gibbs nodded- some objectivity would be nice and Tony was the best place to get that in this situation. Ziva was too involved, Abby and Ducky too withdrawn and McGee too scared of him to deliver the needed reality check. "You're really living up to your second "B" right now. I know that you hate feeling like you're out of the loop, but getting into screaming matches with Agent Granger every couple of hours isn't exactly a good strategy to get into the loop. If anything, it's making them less likely to let you in. I know that you hate taking orders, especially from the FBI and CIA, but maybe just this once you should, you know, let them call the shots. If you're willing to cooperate with them on this now, they're so much more likely to let you in later on when they actually get somewhere. Right now all they're shutting us out of seems to be a crap load of wading hopelessly through files in a desperate attempt to find some tiny lead."

Gibbs leaned back into his chair and studied his senior field agent for a moment. "When did you get so damn wise, DiNozzo?" he asked, a note of pride in his voice. Part of him was glad that Sacks was a player in this because it led to him and Tony being in the office alone. Tony wouldn't have said those things in front of Ziva or McGee because there were just some things that you didn't do in front of an audience and telling your boss that he was being an unreasonable ass was one of them.

"Eh, I bought _The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wisdom_ last week. Good read," Tony said lightly and Gibbs smiled.

"Well that must be one hell of a book."

"I thought so," Tony smiled as he went back to his own desk and went back to reading his old memos as Gibbs began to go through his own pile of emails, though most of them were not memos but rather reports and updates on various cases stretching back some time. They continued to work in silence for the next few hours until the sun began to peak over the various monuments and buildings of DC, streaming in through the large windows and giving everything an orange glow. A quick glance at the clock told Gibbs that it was almost six in the morning and a glance at Tony told him that he was now playing computer solitaire.

"I'm goin' for coffee. French Vanilla with cream and sugar, right, DiNozzo?" Gibbs said as he got up and stretched and Tony looked up at him and nodded.

"Yup. Thanks, Boss," he said with a slightly tired smile.

Gibbs headed for the elevator, and as he was about to press the down button Agent Colby Granger himself appeared from the direction of the conference room where Gibbs knew that the FBI Agents had slept the previous night. Well, there was no time like the present to attempt to clear the air somewhat with the agent and Gibbs cleared his throat, causing the clearly not-quite-awake-yet agent to look up at him in surprise an Gibbs noticed that his hand had instinctively begun to reach around his back for his weapon. "Agent Granger, I have to say that I didn't expect to see anyone else here and awake at this hour," Gibbs said, lowering his hand without pressing the button at the same time as Colby lowered the arm that had been heading for his gun.

"Yeah, I have to say that I had the same thought. Did you and Agent DiNozzo even sleep or did you pull an all-nighter?" Colby asked, gesturing at Tony, who appeared wide awake and completely focused on his computer, but Gibbs had heard the constant click of the mouse as Tony moved cards around cease when he had greeted Granger and Gibbs knew that Tony was listening in.

"Yeah, all-nighter" Gibbs didn't elaborate- Granger didn't need to know that Gibbs had spent the greater part of the aforementioned all-nighter reading and rereading his file. "I'm going for coffee, did you want some?" Gibbs asked and he saw Colby's eyebrows rise ever so slightly in surprise but the man nodded, the clear signs of a coffee addicted fed in need of a caffeine fix practically radiating off him.

"Yeah, that would be great. No offense, but the coffee in your break room… let's just say that I'm not completely convinced that it's actually coffee," he said, shuddering slightly.

"It's an abomination," Gibbs agreed and he could hear Tony snort behind him. "What do you take in your coffee?" he asked as he hit the elevator button at last- diplomacy was one thing, but he needed his coffee.

"Just one sugar, please," Granger said, with a small smile of thanks as the elevator arrived and Gibbs got onto it. Once the elevator doors closed Colby made his way to his original destination; the bathroom. When he reemerged a few minutes later he wandered over to where DiNozzo was sitting and leaned on the desk across from his. "So, is your boss always so bipolar?"

"What do you mean?" Tony asked, glancing up from his current solitaire game.

"Yesterday I got the distinct impression that he wanted to kill me slowly and painfully and today… he's offering to buy me coffee. It's a rather sudden turn-around," Colby shrugged.

"Gibbs doesn't like the FBI. At all. And he doesn't like people taking over his investigations. And he's not too terribly fond of spooks, either. He's not really used to not calling the shots," Tony said carefully and Colby nodded.

"That's exactly what Ziva said about him. She also used he phrase all leaf and no tooth, though I was able to translate that into all bark and no bite," he laughed. "She always did have an issue with idioms. She once offended a Russian very badly that way."

"Yeah. And explaining them to her is a nightmare. Like trying to get her to understand why we would put fish in a barrel and shoot them or what honey attracts flies and not bees. And what the span part of spick and span is. She thought it was spick and spam," Tony said with amusement and Colby laughed again.

"Definitely sounds familiar," he agreed.

"And I really wouldn't worry about Gibbs, Agent Granger. I think he's coming to terms with the fact that this isn't his investigation anymore," Tony told Colby matter-of-factly. "He's a damn good agent, the best I've ever worked with, but he's gotten used to being in control and he has a specific, if unorthodox way of doing things, but he always gets the job done. Always gets his man. His job is his life, which probably explains the three ex-wives," Tony shrugged and Colby couldn't help but mentally compare Gibbs to Gary Walker.

"Yeah, I've known a few guys like that. They usually are some of the best. Sometimes, the farther they are from the norm, the better they get things done," he said and Tony's response was forestalled by the ding of the elevator and Gibbs' entrance.

"Here's your _coffee_" he said the word sarcastically and Tony rolled his eyes as Gibbs deposited the streaming cup on his desk, clearly demonstrating that he felt that his and Tony's definitions of what constituted coffee varied widely. "and yours, Agent Granger," he said, handing a second cup to Colby and dropping the cardboard cup holder into the trash as he took a swig of his own coffee.

"Thank you, Agent Gibbs," Colby said nodding, giving Gibbs a smile. "I'm gonna head back to the conference room before someone else wakes up and freaks out about where I am," he told them, rolling his eyes slightly at the over protectiveness of his friends. "It was nice talking to you, Agent DiNozzo and thanks again for the coffee, Agent Gibbs," he said as he headed back to the conference room. Tony waited until he had disappeared around the corner before turning to Gibbs.

"See that, Boss? He's actually quite nice as long as you don't piss him off. Sounds a lot like you," Tony grinned and Gibbs raised an eyebrow at him.

"Or you, DiNozzo," he shot back and Tony grinned, tipping an invisible hat at his boss.

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	25. Chapter 25

Big thanks to my incredible beta, VanishingP2000. And I still own none of the NCIS or NUMB3RS stuff.

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Chapter 25

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David was the first one to wake up the next morning, sprawled across a couch that they had shoved into the NCIS conference room turned FBI war room the night before. They didn't actually have enough room for all seven of them, so they had the couches pressed up against each other, Megan and Larry and Charlie and Amita had theirs facing each other so that they could snuggle up together, while Don's was up against the back of Charlie's and Colby's was up against the wall with David's in front of his, the back of David's couch separating them.

Abby was on her makeshift bed in her lab, insisting that she was running some very complex tests that she needed to attend to, though no one was exactly clear on what they might be, but no one pressed, while Dr. Mallard had simply headed home as he had to attend to his elderly mother and Gibbs' had sent his team, minus Tony, on whom he wanted to keep an eye, home at around 2100. The others had insisted that Colby, with his gunshot wound and still lingering fatigue, sleep on something that at least somewhat resembled a bed, but he had refused to sleep on something nice and comfy while the rest of them slept in incredibly uncomfortable positions at the table.

Then Abby had mentioned that there were a ton of couches in the lounges along the hallway and suggested that they move some of them into the conference room. The conference table had been pushed into the corner to make room for the couches, but it was still nearly impossible to move around the room. Colby had insisted that he take the only couch that was boxed in. He had absolutely refused to budge on the issue, saying that he didn't feel like falling off the couch if he forgot that he was on a tiny couch and not a bed and David, the only other one who was actually in the debate, had finally given in after almost 10 minutes. It had been a given Don would be stuck next to his brother and girlfriend and that David and Colby would be, for lack of a better term, bunking together on the other two separate couches. Colby had quipped that since Charlie was Don's brother he would have to listen to whatever they did all night, be it talking about complex math stuff or other, more, well, interesting activities. This caused Don to whack him lightly on the head, barely suppressing a shudder at the thought of what those 'other, more interesting activities' might be.

David quietly sat up on the couch, being careful not to wake Colby or anyone else. However, when he glanced at his friend behind him, he saw that he was not, in fact sleeping, but reading a case file and sipping at some coffee.

"What-how did you…without waking me… where did you get the coffee?" David asked in an inarticulate whisper and Colby looked up at him and smiled.

"One, David, seriously: spy, it's kind of in the job description to be all sneaky and two, I ran into Agent Gibbs on the way to the john and, long story short, he said he was going for coffee and did I want one, I said yes and then he went for coffee, I went to the john then I talked to Agent DiNozzo till he got back with the coffee ten minutes later and then I came back here," Colby recapped quietly and thoroughly.

"I thought you hated Gibbs. When did you get all buddy buddy with him?"

"I didn't. I just wanted coffee and you didn't show any sign of waking up anytime soon and I knew you'd kill me if I went out without telling you and the coffee in the break room here is nasty. Honestly, I'll be nice to anyone in the morning if it'll get me some good brew," Colby told him shrugging and quietly turning the page of the file.

"Okay. Sure. So how long have you been up, anyway?" David whispered curiously and Colby rolled his eyes slightly.

"Okay, man, seriously, get your ass back here; I can't deal with this whole whisper over the top of the couch like we're ten year old girls at a slumber party thing," Colby said and David quietly hopped over the back of the couch to sit cross legged next to Colby, who promptly sank back down into the couch and swung his legs up over the back of the couch, jackknifing himself in. "And I've been up since around 0600. And for your personal knowledge it's about 0730 now. So about an hour and a half."

"You know, sleeping is probably a good idea, man," David suggested lightly.

"Well, considering the fact that I got about six hours more than you and about ten more than everyone else did last night, and I was asleep well before the rest of you last night. I'm good to go," Colby insisted, keeping his voice low so that he didn't wake anyone else up.

"Oh, well, if you got more sleep than a bunch of sleep deprived feds you must be getting more than enough sleep for someone who was, literally, at the point of collapsing from exhaustion and was shot two days ago. Seriously, Colby?" David hissed at him, sarcastically.

"Look, I've run on a lot less sleep with much worse injuries in the past. And it's kind of hard to sleep with all this crap running through my head, anyway. Some psycho killing us off, one by one. Maybe even someone I knew and trusted," Colby said morosely, taking another sip of his coffee.

"Hey, man, you know that we're not gonna let anyone kill you, right. We've got your back, bud," David assured him, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

"Yeah, I know, man, thanks. It's just that, you know, I trusted her. I played right into her hand. I'm supposed to know better than that. After all these years, people shouldn't be able to pull the wool over my eyes that thoroughly," Colby sunk down lower into the couch and closed his eyes wearily.

"Hey, if it's any consolation she obviously fooled a lot of other spies, seeing as how they put her in charge of all CIA Black Ops operations. Gave her access to files that the president of the United States himself couldn't get access to if he tried," David told him.

"It's not. Bureaucrats can't tell if they're being lied to by a little school girl. But it probably should be some consolation that none of the Black Ops agents never caught on. Unless they did and that's why they were killed!" Colby whispered excitedly, trying to sit up straight and just falling back comically.

"Nice! You might have a point about working best when most of the general population is sleeping," David agreed, laughing quietly at Colby's failed attempts to get out of his jackknifed position.

"Shut up," Colby hissed as he did some kind of weird contortionist sort of jumping motion, which resulted in him having his legs hanging over the end of the couch and his head slamming against David's shoulder. "Sorry 'bout that, David," he said as he pulled his legs down onto the couch and imitated David's Indian style position.

"You know, that was, quite possibly the most ungraceful and just the most generally pathetic thing that I have ever, in my entire life, seen," David said, silently laughing at his friends antics and rubbing his shoulder where Colby's head had connected hard with his bone.

"Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words of wisdom, Yoda boy," Colby said sarcastically and grumpily.

"Sorry, man, it's just, you know, if you'd have seen it, you'd be laughing, too," David defended himself feebly.

"Uh hunh," Colby said, but the rest of his retort was forestalled by the door banging open loudly, causing David and Colby to jump slightly and everyone else to shoot straight up, Megan and Don with their guns out and slightly raised out of habit. Amanda rushed into the room, looking extremely pissed off.

"You are never going to believe whose prints the latent's came back as," she addressed the entire room- most of who weren't quite awake still, but the actual comment was directed only to her husband.

"Allison Mortensen," Colby said blandly and Amanda whipped her head around to stare at him in shock.

"Okay, what the hell? Did you develop the gift of telepathy since the last time I saw you?"

"Long story, Ams. Basically, she's the reason I got shot the other day. She's the one that set the trap. She was the one I was going to meet, but I just assumed that someone had followed us or something, then we got onto other stuff I just kinda forgot about it until Don reminded me last night after you left. But then the evidence fell into place," Colby explained, taking another swig of his coffee.

"How did you get coffee, Colby?" Don asked drowsily, clearly no where near awake yet.

Colby and David both ignored him and David and turned to Colby. "Well, now that we've confirmed the theory that you and our fearless leader came up with last night from absolutely nothing is correct. Impressive" David smirked as he snagged Colby's coffee out of his hand and took a gulp of the luke warm beverage.

"Hey! I had to brown nose Special Agent Gibbs for that caffeine fix!" Colby protested and David handed the coffee back to him, smirking.

"Coffee?" Don muttered again, still staring around groggily and once again David and Colby ignored him. Charlie and Amita had gone back to sleep as soon as they realized that it was just one of the agent's making a too-loud-for-0800 (0400 in LA)-entrance and were once again snuggled up under the blanket, Charlie's arms wrapped around Amita's shoulders. Larry was the only one who hadn't yet stirred at the commotion, apparently completely unaware of the drama unfolding around him and Megan had flopped back down onto the couch with a groan and now had her head buried in a pillow.

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	26. Chapter 26

Big thanks to my amazing beta, Vanishing2000. I own nothing. And I'll give you guys three guesses what I was watching while I wrote the beginning of this chapter.

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Chapter 26

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"I'm telling you, Superbowl 38, Panthers vs. Patriots. 32 to 29, with the Patriots kicking the winning field goal with four seconds left, those bastards. It does not get any closer than that. I mean, come on, it was a dead heat up until the last four seconds! But no one ever considers it, cuz everybody is too busy thinking about the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake fiasco. But come on, it was definitely the best superbowl, especially since the Panthers were considered a pushover team the whole time. Everyone thought that the Cowboys would kill them, then everyone was shocked when they beat St. Louis in double overtime and then when they kicked the Eagles' asses. They did love the nail biting game ending, though. We don't call them the cardiac cats for nothing," Amanda told David heatedly. David, Colby and Amanda were debating what the closest Super bowl in NFL history had been on the car ride from DC out to Langley, on their way to arrest Allison Mortensen.

"Hmm, yeah, actually, I never really thought about that. You are right about everyone focusing on the halftime show, though. That's all you ever heard about. I was in Tel Aviv when that Superbowl was played and I only heard about it, I never actually saw it," David conceded.

"Are you kidding me?! If it is the last thing I ever do, seriously, Sinclair," Amanda said as they pulled up to the guard gate at the CIA compound in Langley, Virginia.

"Well I've got the tape of it, since it was my team playing in it and all. We can watch it when we get back to Los Angeles," Colby supplied helpfully and the conversation was put on hold temporarily as they showed the guard their credentials and they were waved through the gates.

"Sounds good, I can see how close it really was. Not to mention the uncensored version of the halftime show," David said, grinning in a somewhat evil manner and Colby laughed.

"And I haven't even told you about the streaker that ran around the field right before the second half kickoff," Colby smirked as he pulled the car into a parking spot, causing David to whip his head around to stare at him.

"You're kidding."

"Nope. It was like a full on anatomy lesson, that 10 minute segment was."

"Oh, this should be interesting," David said as they got out of the car and joined the others and headed into the CIA lobby.

"Hey, Granger, I thought you gave up the spy life for the more monotonous life of an FBI agent. Didn't think we'd see you back in our neck of the woods again," an agent called to Colby as the agents walked through the CIA lobby.

"So not my choice. And this is an FBI case. And an ATF case. And an NCIS case. And about six other agencies case, too. It's like the poster child for interagency cooperation. Either that or a sick alphabet soup related joke," Colby quipped back, referring to the virtual army of agents with various letters emblazoned on their vests (or, in the case of the Black Ops agents, plain black vests)

"So why are y'all marching into our domain? And whoa, I thought she was dead? What gives, Granger?" The man said, gaping openly at Amanda, who was wearing an FBI vest and jacket, which had caused him not to notice her immediately.

"All in good time, my friend," Colby assured him as the FBI team and Amanda, Sarah and Jake piled into the first elevator and then the NCIS team and the ATF agents boarded the second elevator.

"Her office is on floor nine, David," Colby told David and he pressed the button with the number nine and the number 8 on it and the elevator doors closed. When the display showed that they were at level eight and the doors opened, Amanda, Jake and Sarah got out, but not before Colby and Amanda has kissed briefly, wishing each other luck and muttering quick a quick 'I love you' to each to each other. They were watching the stairwell, in case she decided to try and run and go down. The ATF agents would be watching the stairwell up and the NCIS agents would be watching the elevators on the ninth floor in case she decided to try and take that escape route. The FBI team would be going to her office. Gibbs had informed Fornell that Sacks was in on it, that he was probably the one that had murdered Special Agent Howe and Fornell was going to take him in to custody as soon as the FBI team gave him the all clear- they didn't want to tip Mortensen off until they told her she was under arrest.

"You sure you're up for this, Colby?" Don asked and Colby nodded resolutely, pulling his .45 Springfield TRP out of its holster and slamming a bullet into the chamber before flicking the safety off.

"Okay, let's do this," Don said, with the same grim resolution as Colby, also pulling out his Glock, with David and Megan followed suit as the elevator doors opened.

"Her office is down the hall. Fifth on the right," Colby told them, leading the way out of the elevator and down the hallway. Several CIA employees stopped what they were doing to stare at the FBI raid team in the middle of their building. They stopped at the door with a gold plaque that read _Allison Mortensen, Deputy Director of Operations_. Colby banged the door open without knocking and raised his gun, David coming in directly behind him followed quickly by Don and Megan. "Damn it. She's not here," Colby cursed, angrily.

"Where the hell is she?" David asked.

"Suspect is not in her office," Colby said into his comm., walking back out into the hall and stopping a woman who was walking past the office. "Do you know where Deputy Director Mortensen is?" he asked urgently.

"I think that she's in a meeting with the senior Operations officers," she said, surprised.

"Where?" Colby asked sharply.

"Uh, one of the conference rooms on floor eight. I don't know which one," she told him, slightly flustered by he urgency of his questions.

"Thanks," he said gesturing to her that she could continue on her way. "She's on floor eight in one of the conference rooms. We're on our way down now," Colby spoke into his comm. once again as the team headed for the stairs.

"Copy that, Colby. I'll see if I can find out if anyone knows which conference room she's in," Amanda's voice crackled through the team's earpieces. "Wait, hang on, I got her. She just came out of one of the conference rooms." Before any of them could reply they heard gunshots coming from below them and they broke out into a run, taking the stairs three at a time. When they banged out onto the eighth floor the gunshots had stopped and Allison was lying a few feet from the door, several bullet holes in her chest. Sarah and Jake were coming out from behind the door frames that they had taken cover behind.

"Amanda!" Sarah screamed suddenly, rushing over to another open door and kneeling down. "Oh, god, no," she moaned and Colby rushed over to kneel beside her before falling back against the door frame and pressing the back of his hand that was still holding his gun against his eyes.

"God damn it," he moaned while Jake came over and pulled Sarah up and into a tight embrace. David and Megan walked over to the room as well, while Don called for an SID team and an ME and then calling Fornell to tell him to bring in Sacks.

"Oh, god, Colby…" Megan said as she saw Amanda lying on the ground, a bullet hole in her temple and blood everywhere. Colby pushed himself up off the ground and walked away from his wife's body, his gun hand now over his mouth instead of his eyes.

"I got this one," David said, putting a hand on Megan's arm to stop her as she went to follow Colby. Megan looked from Colby to David and nodded reluctantly, watching as their friend walked over to elevators and pushed the up button. David followed him and got into the elevator putting a hand on his shoulder as Colby pushed one of the floor buttons.

"What happened?" Don asked, making his way over to where Megan was standing, watching the elevator doors close on her friends. "Oh, man…" he said as Jake led Sarah away from her sister's lifeless body.

"Damn it," Megan muttered as she looked down at Amanda Granger's now lifeless body. She just hoped that this wouldn't be the straw that broke the camels back and caused Granger to leave the FBI and Law Enforcement as a whole for good. Or worse. Megan shook her head slightly, not wanting to think about any of these possibilities. They would get Colby through this. They had to.

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	27. Chapter 27

This is the penultimate chapter. Just a short epilogue left after this one. And I was still watching football when I wrote this one. Hey, I spend the entirety of my Sunday afternoons watching it, okay?

Big thanks to my wonderful beta, VanishingP2000. And I don't own any of NUMB3RS or NCIS.

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Chapter 27

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David didn't say anything to Colby as he pressed the button for roof access or as the elevator jerked up. When the elevator doors opened Colby walked out immediately and ran up the stairs two at a time and shoved the door open roughly. David followed him, albeit more slowly. When he reached the roof he found Colby leaning heavily against the barrier, his hands braced a few feet apart, looking out across the wide, sweeping CIA compound. David moved over to stand next to his friend, leaning his back up against the wall and stuffing his hands deep down into his packets. Truth be told he had no idea what to say to a man who had just lost his wife for the second time.

"You know, it's weird, it never really resonated that she was really alive. I've just gotten so used to her not being around that, I don't know…it's just that, I can't be devastated right now, because all I really am is grateful. I'm just so grateful that I got to kiss her and hold her one more time. But the woman that walked into NCIS a few days ago was not my wife. She was…I don't know, a hardened, over jaded shell of the woman I loved. And I feel guilty that I'm not more broken up about her death. It's just that… tell me how am I supposed to grieve for the death of someone who died almost eight years ago, David?" Colby said, still staring out at the trees lining the outside of the compound.

"Its okay, man. You've been through hell. Forget about what everyone else thinks you should feel and just…you know…" David trailed off lamely and Colby snorted softly.

"I have no idea what you just said, Dave."

"Yeah, me neither. But the intent was sincere," David laughed nervously.

"Just… don't be so… you know, look, don't worry about what you say. I can tell that you have absolutely no idea what to say to me and that's okay, because I have no idea what to say to me, either," Colby said. "There's not exactly a book called _What to say to your friend whose spy wife has died for the second time_," Colby quipped weakly, but despite the lameness of the joke they both laughed long and hard, but silent tears soon began to slide down his face and the laughter died away. David silently turned around and put an arm around Colby's shoulders, pulling him into a half hug.

"Hey, if you ever need to talk, I'm here. I'm sure Megan's game, too, but she'll probably psycho analyze you. Me, I'm game for whatever. If you want to go out, get smashed and then rant at me in a drunken stupor for a few hours and then pass out, I'll be glad to take you home, deposit you on the couch and have some coffee and aspirin ready in the morning," David said as he let go of his grip on Colby's shoulders and resumed his position leaning up against the wall and Colby copied his stance.

"Thanks. I don't think I need to get smashed, but a couple of beers and then a few games of pool sound good," Colby said David nodded. "And, uh, could you maybe, you know, help me with the funeral arrangements tomorrow? I just… how do you explain this one to her parents? Oh, by the way, your daughter didn't actually die seven years ago, but she actually is dead now. There's no point in putting them through that. I figure I'll bury her under Granger, but I have no idea where."

"Sure, man." David said and Colby sent him a small grateful smile.

"Thank you, David."

"Come on, let's head back, they say that watching Special Agent Gibbs conduct an interrogation is pretty incredible. And considering the fact that he had us scared and we didn't even do anything, I'm inclined to believe it. Plus Sacks tried to put his Senior Field Agent in jail for a crime that he didn't commit. So what do you say we head back to NCIS, watch a Gibbs interrogation and then get this case wrapped up so we can get back to nice, sunny warm Los Angeles and away from Gibbs," David said, clapping Colby lightly on the back and Colby nodded. They both walked back down the stairs and back into the elevator and David hit the button for the lobby. The elevator ride and walk to the car was silent and Colby wordlessly handed the keys to David before David even had a chance to ask for them.

"After we see the Gibbs interrogation what do you say we take a nice, long run?" Colby suggested and David sent him a sideways look as he pulled the car out of the parking space. "I'm fine, David, running helps me clear my head and I haven't had a good run in, like, two weeks. And I am so sick of looking at the pumpkin puke orange walls of the NCIS building. I need to get out," Colby insisted and David sighed.

"Fine. But so help me god, if you start feeling any pain or anything, you had damn well better tell me. I am not going to the hospital with you again," David said and Colby smiled triumphantly.

"I promise," Colby said, drawing an invisible "x" over his heart. They spent the rest of the car ride back to DC talking about what football teams had the best chance of making it to the Superbowl.

"As much as I hate the Patriots and believe that they don't deserve jack because, I mean, come on they cheat, but since apparently the league isn't going to do anything about it, they'll probably win the Superbowl. I mean, the Colts are pretty much falling apart at the seams and the rest of the AFC, except maybe San Diego."

"Yeah, but you know, I think this year is the Packer's year, though. I think that they can get to the Superbowl; I mean look at the year that Brett Favre has been having. It's the year of the Cheesehead, man," David said and Colby nodded thoughtfully.

"Yeah, I think you're right. It's pretty much between the Packers and Cowboys in the NFC. But the Giants are actually surprisingly good and they're getting some chatter, but honestly, I'll just be impressed if they make it to the playoffs- they'd have to be a wildcard, Dallas has that division all wrapped up.. It's just a bad year all around in the NFL. I mean, look at the Panthers. They started out so good and then it just went completely downhill with all the injuries. I swear we have to be starting the water boy or something by now. I mean, we might not be winning, but I think that we deserve an award just for managing to field a complete team every week without having the kicker double as quarterback or something," Colby said.

"Yeah, probably a fair point. So tell me, how does a guy from Idaho end up being a Carolina Panther's fan?" David asked, curiously.

"A buddy of mine from College ended up playing for the Panthers, actually. Amanda and I both ended up being diehard Panther fans. How does a guy from the Bronx end up being a Green Bay Packers fan?" Colby shot back.

"When I was in high school one of my teachers was a Packers fan and he was the one that set me straight, helped me get out of the Bronx and into college and everything, so it just kind of stuck, you know. And trust me; he was diehard, owned stock and everything. It was impressive, yet kind of scary."

"Yeah. I hear you. And I'm with you; this is probably the Packers year. They're having a damn good season. The fact that the Giants are even Playoff contenders this year is a sad commentary, though. There are just not a lot of really good teams this year," Colby said and they continued to discuss the chances of various football teams in the upcoming playoffs for the remainder of the hour and a half car ride.

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	28. Epilogue

Well, here we are. We've reached the end of the NaNoWriMo line. Big thanks to everyone who has stayed with this story and especially to everyone who has reviewed it. And the biggest thanks ever to my incredibly amazingly wonderful beta, VanishingP2000 especially for not, you know, murdering me when I sent her the zip file with this story in it and then, as soon as she had finished beta'ing the whole thing sending her another chapter that I decided to squeeze in there. I hope that you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Still, after all these chapter, I don't own NUMB3RS or NCIS. And I still wish that I owned Colby.

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Epilogue

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A dozen people dressed in black stood around the grave in the Los Angeles cemetery, paying their last respects to Agent Amanda Granger. Jake had his arm wrapped around Sarah's shoulders and she had her head on his chest. Charlie and Amita were holding hands, as were Larry and Megan. Mia and Jared were also present, as was Alan Eppes. Although he had never actually met Amanda he had said that he wanted to be there for Colby and had even offered to hold a mini wake at his and Charlie's house after the funeral, for which Colby thanked him profusely. Alan had just waved it off, saying that it was least that he could do. Don and Alan were both standing next to Charlie and Amita, while David was standing close by Colby's shoulder, offering his friend silent support.

The ceremony ended and everyone dropped a rose onto the coffin and said a few words, before heading to their cars, going back to their homes or hotel rooms before heading over to the Eppes household for the wake.

Colby was the last one in the line and he bent down next to the coffin with his hand on it. "I love you, Ams. Always will. Goodbye," he said simply, pressing a kiss to his fingers and onto the coffin, just as he had done to the headstone back in Washington. He straightened back up and backed up slightly, watching as the coffin was lowered into the ground and covered with dirt. By now he and David were the only ones left in the cemetery. Once the grave was completely filled in they turned to go, Colby sending one last glance towards the bright white marble headstone.

_Amanda Elizabeth Granger_

_Beloved wife_

_Devout Patriot_

_Born October 26, 1977_

_Died December 13, 2007_

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конец

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End file.
